Blessed Or Miserable - [Psalm 1]

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Well, there's lots of reasons why I love you Bethlehem Bible Church. I can think of one that just happened this week at Carol's house last night and she said, oh, there's no more sign -ups for meals for Becky's house because everybody's already signed up to provide for her meals after her surgery.
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And I thought, you know what, what a dear congregation. Glad that you have a love for the lost.
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I appreciate that about you. You want to evangelize other people. Many of you counted a great privilege and duty to preach the gospel to friends and family and others.
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But I probably love you the most because you love the Bible. You love the
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Bible and you love Bible preaching. And so I commend you for your study.
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The message today is not going to be a scolding message, how could you, how dare you. It's going to be a message of Bethlehem Bible Church, I know you love the word of God and I want you to continue to love the word of God.
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And let's open our Bibles this morning to Psalm chapter 1 and I think I can help encourage you to keep going, to keep excelling.
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There's always room for more Bible study. I don't think you'll ever say to yourself, you know what, I studied the
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Bible plenty, I don't have to study anymore. And so I know most of you love to study the
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Bible, you love to devour the word of God like newborn babes, you long and desire after the new life -giving word, the pure milk of the word.
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And I know you want to grow and so may we use Psalm 1 today by the Spirit's power so you study even more.
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When I want to get motivated to study the Bible more, I often think of Jonathan Goforth's quote, my deepest regret on reaching three score years in 10.
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What would your deepest regret be, Jonathan? Is that I have not devoted more time to the study of the
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Bible. Still, in less than 19 years, I have gone through the
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New Testament in Chinese 55 times. And so not only studying the
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English Bible, but the Chinese Bible. I think of the psalmist regarding the word of God, they're desirable more than gold, yes, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.
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Moreover, by them the word thy servant is warned, in keeping them there is great reward.
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And we live in a day and age where almost everyone has a Bible, have an access, you have access to many
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Bibles, multiple Bibles. In print, there's never been a day and age like today where people have so much access to the
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Bible. Smartphones, Braille Bibles, and the list goes on and on. But some folks today, maybe evangelicalism in general, certainly not this church, they have so much access to the
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Bible, but they know the Bible so little. Shouldn't that be different? Shouldn't it be we have the
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Bible in so many different languages, with so many different translations, with dynamic equivalence translation, phrase for phrase, literal translations, word for word, paraphrases.
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And so we want to make sure we know the Bible. We have so much of the Word available. We want to be people of the
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Book and for the Book. And so we're going to look at Psalm chapter 1 today.
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It's called the Gateway Psalm. It's called a preface of the Psalms because it just leads us into the
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Psalms and starts off with just a motivating exhortation and a motivating description.
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Alexander White, a famous Scottish person, said to his theological students, oh,
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I envy you young men with your ministry before you and especially that you have a head, a lifetime of explaining the
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Psalms to your people. I mean, to just think of the Psalms, aren't these the chapters that you go to when life is the toughest?
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You find yourself just going to the Psalms and you see your emotions expressed by the psalmist.
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Isn't this the book that you go to when life is giving you the most joy and satisfaction? You find yourself drawn to the
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Psalms and you think, I see my heartbeat there. The echo of the psalmist is the echo of my heart.
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Like John Donne said, like manna which tasted to every man, like that he loved the best.
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And so we're going to look at Psalm 1 today, verses 1 through 6. We're in between books. We just finished
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Jonah. We'll go into another book soon enough, but we'll have some special expositions between now and January or so.
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He that would be wise, let him read the Proverbs. He that would be holy, let him read the
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Psalms. Now, the Psalms in Hebrew just means praises.
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The Psalms in Greek, where we get the word Psalms, it means to pluck a string or to twang a string, and they were songs.
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And so we're going to look at this song, Psalm 1 of the psalmist, and I think you'll be motivated to keep studying the
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Bible. So let's take a look at Psalm 1. Let me read Psalm 1 to you in the ESV, and as I read it,
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I want you to ask a question. What does it say and what doesn't it say?
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Is anything missing from this? Does it focus on one thing or another? What's in it?
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So let's find out as I read Psalm 1. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the
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Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. He's like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.
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And all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so.
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They're like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
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For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
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You can read this gateway Psalm. You can read this introductory Psalm over and over and over, and here's what you won't find in the
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Psalm. You won't find any commands. You won't find any imperatives. You'll find just a description of two ways of life.
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To use the language of Matthew 7, you have the broad road and the narrow road.
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You have the road of righteousness, and you have the road of wickedness. You have the road of blessedness, and you have the road of misery.
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Which one will you choose? What a great way to start off the Psalms. It reminds me of Jeremiah, Jeremiah chapter 21.
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You shall say to all this people, thus says the Lord, behold, I said before you the way of life and the way of death.
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And so this is an excellent Psalm for lots of reasons. One is because we live in a day and age of relativity.
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If it's good for you, it must be good. If it's good for me, it must be good for me. All religions are valid.
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We're all on the same path. And the Psalmist comes out and says in Psalm 1, there's only two ways.
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The right way, the narrow way, the godly way, the blessed way, and the wrong way.
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And this way is a commendable way, go that way, and this way doesn't matter.
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The world says it's right, doesn't matter that popular opinion says it's right, it doesn't matter that everybody else is doing it, it's the wrong way.
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And look at how the Psalm starts. It starts off with verses 1 through 3, talking about the blessed man, the righteous man, and then it talks about the ungodly in the second section.
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Super easy to outline. Description of the blessed man and a description of the wicked man.
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And you'll see the main difference between these two people, the blessed man or woman and the miserable man or woman, is the object of their delight.
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What's the object of their affection? And we're going to see for the blessed man, for the blessed woman, it's the
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Word of God. Two men, two ways, two destinies,
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Psalm chapter 1, verse 1. Look at how it starts in the ESV. What a great way to start the Psalms.
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Blessed, our ESV, how blessed is the man. What does blessed mean?
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Now lots of people say, well it just means happy, blissful, well it could mean happy and blissful, but it basically means this.
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It means someone that has, from God's perspective, been blessed.
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Now you don't necessarily always feel the blessing. Job was a blessed man even though he lost his 10 children.
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A superior one shows kindness and goodness and love to someone who is inferior to them.
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That's called blessing. That's called a blessing.
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Deep -seated joy, contentment, it refers to those as well. It has a little aspect of envied that this particular man, this particular woman, the way their life is, they've been so blessed by another, that is the triune
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God. Boy, I wish I could be like that. They make me want to be them because there's this envious desire.
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It's a common theme in the Psalms. One writer said, how abundantly is that word blessed multiplied in the book of Psalms?
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You're going to love this. The Psalms seem to be made out of that word blessed.
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And the foundation raised upon that word for it is the first word of the book. Can you imagine the psalmist starts off with blessings?
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It doesn't take you very long, at least in my life, when I start reading Genesis and I think, you know, I've earned along with them curses, cursing.
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I've earned judgment. I've earned punishment. I've earned hell. I deserve all these things because of sin.
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And here the psalmist starts off, blessed. This man is blessed. Don't these
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Psalms have the same theme? Psalm 2, how blessed are all who take refuge in Him.
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Don't you like Psalm 32? How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
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How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity. Psalm 34, oh, taste and see that the
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Lord is good. How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Psalm 146, verse 5, how blessed is he whose help is the
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God of Jacob. And then you go straight to the New Testament on the Sermon on the Mount and what we call the Beatitudes.
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Blessed are. But if you take a look at this passage, blessed is the man.
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It's a conditional blessing. It's a conditional blessing. Blessed is that particular man and no other man.
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If I could put it this way, while some receive special blessings of forgiveness and salvation and redemption, we'd call that some special grace of God.
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Everybody in the world, believer and unbeliever, they receive sunshine. They receive taste buds.
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They receive food and family and a variety of other things. Those common blessings, those common graces.
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Which one does this refer to? Blessed is the man. This isn't the general blessing.
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This is the man of God's own choosing. This is the woman of God's own choosing and God, the superior one, wants to bless that particular man.
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Only this man that's described in Psalm 1 gets these blessings. I don't know if you like football or not, but let's say we're down at some stadium someplace down off the 405 or whatever that freeway is.
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Is it Foxboro Stadium? Is that what it's called? Gillette Stadium, sorry. Lambeau Field, I might know.
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And there's 80 ,000 people there, 60 ,000 people there, whatever it holds. But this has a connotation of the camera zooms in on the one person seated in section 42, row 8, seat 7.
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It's this particular person, this one and no one else. It just zoomed in. And so the psalmist wants you to begin thinking, you know,
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I want to be that person. Am I this person? Who gets these kind of blessings and the satisfaction and the bliss and the happiness and the envy and the blessings of a superior?
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What is it in their life that makes them blessed? I want to know that. I want to do that.
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And of course, it goes without saying, now I'm going to say it. So that doesn't make sense. This psalm is not going to say, if you do these things, you get saved.
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We don't believe in a salvation by reading the Bible, by shunning worldliness. We believe in salvation by the work of another
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Jesus Christ. He perfectly obeys the laws of God. He perfectly fulfills all righteousness.
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He dies on the cross for sinners. He gets our sin credited to His account.
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We get His righteousness credited to our account, and God raises Him from the dead.
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In response to that, we have a desire for the Word. This book is not saying, if you do something, then you earn salvation, or if you don't, you won't.
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It has given you a general description. It's almost like a proverb. It's a didactic psalm, and it's like a proverb.
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This is the way. Walk in it. Now I don't want to get off that word yet, blessed, because it's still so powerful.
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It's actually plural. So it's at the front, it's a gateway, it's a preface, and it's plural, but it doesn't translate well from the plural.
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Here's the plural, blessednesses. I mean, it's just kind of hard to sing, blessednesses.
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But that's the word, blessednesses. It's got an intensity. It's got a multiplicity.
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Actually one old commentator said it's got a superfluity. What's superfluity? Well, you have to look it up.
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But this word's got it, I'm telling you that. Can I get a witness? It's like double blessing, the ultimate blessing, lots of blessings.
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And so the psalmist at the very beginning is saying, here's two ways for life. Do you want to be the blessed man or woman, or do you want to be the miserable man or woman?
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It just draws you in. Actually, that word blessed is very exclamatory as well.
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Oh, how very, very, very, very blessed is this person. Don't you want to be blessed?
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Spurgeon said, those that trust in him, Christ, are blessed. And I would observe first that they are really blessed.
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It's no fiction, no imaginary blessing, it is a real blessedness which belongs to those who trust in God.
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Oh, the blessednesses. Well, how are these blessings given?
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We're going to take a look at verses 1, B, C, and D, what not to do, and verse 2, what to do.
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So, let's start off with shunning worldliness. If you want me to give you a preacher's imperative, if you want to be the blessed man or woman of this psalm, number one, you must shun worldliness.
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Do you see what it says in verse 1? Who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers.
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Friends, remember when you read the psalms, you have to say, oh, what kind of book is this? What kind of genre is it?
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It's a hymn book, it's poetry. And so, if you're not careful and you forget that it's poetry, you'll have the wrong translation, you'll have the wrong interpretation.
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Poetry has parallelism. Poetry has logical parallels, symmetrical parallels, and this is poetry.
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If you don't think of poetry and you think this is an epistle, here's how you would teach this verse. Walks not in the counsel, doesn't stand in the way, doesn't sit in the seat.
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Do you know what? You're walking by a bunch of ungodly people and before you know it, you stand there and you look, and before you know it, you're so comfortable, you sit down and you're part of them.
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So don't meander too close, you might stand there and loiter around and then you'll eventually sit with them.
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That's how it's taught in a wooden way, in a wooden literal way. But it's poetry.
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And what is the poetry trying to tell you? Well, Isaiah, when he wants to know that God is holy, he says
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God is holy, holy, holy. Emphasis. How do you make emphasis with poems?
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You say the same thing, the same way, no, almost the same way, three different times.
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So he's after totality. He's not after geography, don't get close before you know it, you'll stand and then you'll sit.
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He's saying don't walk, don't sit, don't go close, just stay away and avoid ungodliness at all costs, at all times, at all places.
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And he's doing it with a poem. He's doing it with a song. He's doing it with a lyric.
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Now each of these is interesting, walks not in the counsel of the wicked. The blessed man, the blessed woman, with the blessednesses, doesn't walk in the counsel of the wicked, the advice of wicked people, the plans, the principles.
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Here's how you could think about it, the world view. Unbelievers have a world view and we don't walk according to that world view.
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Solomon said to his son, my son, do not walk in the way with them. When it comes to the world's wisdom, we're staying away from that because here it says, stands in the counsel of the wicked.
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Oh, who would want to stand in the counsel of the wicked? Who are the wicked people to you? Now if I just say in New England, that's wicked, then you're thinking something else.
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That's the equivalent of me in Nebraska and my father saying, that's terrible good. I grew up with terrible good or if you're
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Charles Barkley, terrible good, whichever way you'd like it. In New England, it's wicked good. But what's a wicked person?
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Rapist, murderer, abortion doctor, people who cut off other people's heads in Yemen.
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They're the wicked ones. But the wicked ones here in Scripture aren't those kind of wicked people.
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They're the wicked person that's opposite of a righteous person who basically says, when it comes to the counsel of God, when it comes to the advice of Scripture, when it comes to authority over me,
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I just don't care. And I don't want to be bothered. See, that's why people who live behind white picket fences and are nice and civil and moral are the most on the road to destruction because they don't even know it.
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It's one thing if you're a heroin addict, you realize you're not righteous. But if you're a good person compared to other people, compared to society, you're civil, you're moral, then you think you're good.
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And the Bible says you're wicked. And so this blessed man, he doesn't listen to the worldviews of the wicked, of the people who have no time for God, could care less about God.
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And we're not talking about worldliness from the wicked person that says it's a sin for women to wear jeans, beer's a sin, guns are sin, and they can't go to movies.
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And if you take some tobacco and put it in your mouth and light it on fire and inhale, you're going straight to hell.
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That's not the kind of worldliness that's here. It's the worldliness that says, you know what? Materialism is where it's at.
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Religion is where it's at. Just be busy religiously. Sacramentalism is where it's at.
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Just even call it Christianity and say, you know, if I'm baptized and take communion, I'm all set. Whatever the isms and the schisms and the ologies are, this is philosophy.
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This is thinking. This is the thinking of a wicked person. And the wicked person says, oh, they do wicked things, of course.
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But the wicked person here in the Psalms, Rasha is the Hebrew word. It's basically, you know what? I don't want to consider
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God. He doesn't own me. He doesn't rule me. He doesn't make me. And I don't have to listen to him because I've got my own life to live.
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I will neglect the standards of God, the rule of God. I will have no regard, just indifferent, couldn't be bothered.
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I mean, how many people have you met in your life? They wouldn't deny God, but they're just like, I just don't really care that much.
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Maybe Easter I might think about it, but I just don't really care. Those are the kind of people, when they are giving the ologies and the philosophies to you, that kind of stuff needs to be avoided, or stand in the path of sinners, or sit in the seat of scoffers.
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The wicked say, I don't care. The scoffers say, God, I hate you.
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God, I'm going to treat you with deriding, mocking, contempt, and scorn.
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If you really exist, why don't you just hit me with a lightning bolt, then I might believe. Self -sufficient pride,
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Proverbs 21, 24. It says, proud, haughty scoffer are his names, who acts with insolent pride.
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Kind of this sneering attitude of, yeah, religion is for weak people.
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Blatant ridicule, blatant rejection. And so what the writer wants to do is, here's the blessed man, here's the miserable man.
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And for the blessed man or woman, you've got to first say, there's a worldview out there that is anti -God, anti -Christ.
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It is satanic, and I just can't get sucked into thinking this way. So how then shall
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I think? Verse 2, shun worldliness and saturate your mind with Scripture.
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I know there's no technical imperative in the text, but the description makes me want to do the right thing, and so I'll give it to you in imperative.
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Shun worldliness, if you want to be the blessed man, and saturate your mind with Scripture. Verse 2, oh, this is so good, but his delight.
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But rather, you see the contrast? But his delight, of course it works for females as well, is in the law of the
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Lord, and he meditates on that law day and night. Instead of having a love affair with the world and what it's selling, there's other instruction, there's other counsel, there's other advice.
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I'll listen to them instead of the Lord. No, this particular blessed man delights in the law of the
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Lord. Now, let's figure out what law is first, and then we'll take a look at delight. Law is
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Torah in Hebrew, and it could mean a single command is law.
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It could mean a section of the Bible is law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
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By the way, in German, if you have a German Bible, the first five books of the Bible are easy to memorize.
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Moses 1, Moses 2, Moses 3, Moses 4, Moses 5. That could be
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Torah. It could be general instruction, general guidance, or it could be the entire
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Old Testament. I think that's the idea here. The Old Testament as a whole, and of course for us as Christians, we read the
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Psalms in a Christian fashion. They're part of the Christian Bible, that is, from Genesis to Revelation.
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My delight, the blessed man says, is in the Bible, is in the Word of God as he reveals himself and what he's done.
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And of course, you can see how this is building up to who Jesus is, because didn't
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Jesus say in John chapter 5 that the Old Testament bears witness to me? Didn't Jesus say in Luke 24 that the
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Scriptures and Moses and wisdom and the Psalms speak of me? And of course, when you're a
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Christian and you've been saved by grace alone, through faith alone, through Christ alone, you begin to read the
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Bible and you see Jesus. Oh, the captain of the army back there in Joshua 5, that's
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Jesus, who was walking in the cool of the garden in Genesis 3. That's the second person of the Trinity, the pre -incarnate
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Jesus. And the list goes on. So that's the law, is general instruction of the
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Lord. You probably even see a little notation in your Bible or your study Bible, and it tells you instruction.
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Whose delight is the instruction of the Lord. And it's in contrast to the worldliness and the ologies of sinners and scoffers.
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Divine revelation is what we're after. And it says, his delight is in the law of the
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Lord, chief desire, pleasure. It's not distasteful.
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It's not an acquired taste. It's something you feel favor towards.
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I delight. Literally, the word can mean you kind of lean in over it. You're leaning in over it because you're so eager.
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Your son goes off to Iraq and he's in the military and you get a letter back and you just open it up with intensity and you can just feel yourself, instead of just kind of reading and sitting back and kind of glancing casually, getting distracted, you could feel yourself pulled into the letter because you want to find out about it.
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It's about your son. It's about your daughter overseas. This is the language of love letters.
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I almost said, I remember when Kim used to send me love letters, but that would make it sound like she never sends them to me anymore.
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But you get this love letter from your wife, from your fiance, from your girlfriend. You have great delight in them and then you have great delight in what they've said and you just get yourself pulled into them.
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By the way, I have a little file in my file cabinet at home, love letters. I get so much gratification and satisfaction in something.
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I delight in it. I delight in them. Pleases me. No wonder Jeremiah said of the word, your words were found and I ate.
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I just want to appropriate, assimilate. I mean, people delight in fine food.
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People delight in fine wine. People delight in poetry. People delight in the weather. People delight in their children.
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People delight in their spouse. That's the idea. Actually, in the Hebrew, it's often used of a man delighting in the woman he loves.
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Delight. Remember King Ahasuerus had that little beauty contest? What kind of ladies made it back for round two?
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Answer, in Esther chapter two, is those in whom King Ahasuerus had delight.
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And the thing is, that word delight there in Hebrew, in the poem, his delight is in the law of the
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Lord, is emphatic. It's emphatic. If you want to really feel the romance of that emphasis, it's a nominal clause.
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I'm just kidding. Make you just heart warmed. The nominal clause. There's no finite verb, and why does it have it like that?
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Because it's just, there's a word order change, and then it's set up in such a way where it just pops out, should pop out to your mind.
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His delight is in the law of the Lord. Same word used in Psalm 119, make me walk in the path of your commandments, for I delight in them.
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It's close to these words, and this sentiment, all found in Psalm 119,
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I shall raise up my hands to your commandments, which I love. Oh, how
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I love thy law. I hate those who are double minded, but I love thy law.
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And here's the thing, if you desire something, if you desire someone, if you desire a woman if you delight in something, or delight in someone, do you spend time with them?
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Do you spend time with it? The answer is yes. And so look at the text. And on his law, he meditates
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Sunday morning alone. On his law, he meditates
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January 1st through 5th, and forgets of the resolutions. He meditates day and night.
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Night and day. Day and night. Now, I love the Greek language, but I also love
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Hebrew, and especially love it with its words that are very much sounding like what they are.
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It's an onomatopoetic word for meditate, and it just means to mutter. It just means to kind of just groan, or to growl over, to use the language of Isaiah, or use the language of both times in Isaiah, to murmur, to growl, to just kind of say to yourself,
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I'm reading something, and I'm repeating it back, I'm almost interacting with it in such a fashion that I've forgotten that anybody's looking,
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I've forgotten that anybody's around, I forgot that the radio's on, I forgot that grandma's over, and I'm just so absorbed with the text.
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It's like my voice is doing what people do at the wailing wall in Jerusalem. Their whole body's going like this, and this word doesn't mean their body's moving.
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It means they're talking, they're in deep meditation so that you can just kind of almost hear the feedback, the replaying in their mind over and over and over, taking so much pleasure in it.
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It's like rehearsing, and trying to dig out, and seeing the treasure, and saying, you know what,
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I just want to get my eyes wrapped around it, meditates over and over in my mind, and slowly thinking about it, repeatedly thinking about it, memorizing it, abandoning other distractions, chewing on the cut of God's word, brooding over it like a chicken on her eggs.
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Joshua chapter 1, the book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night.
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Think of the New Testament, Luke 11, and it came about while Jesus said these things. One of the women in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, blessed is the womb who bore you and the breast at which you nursed.
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Jesus said, on the contrary, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it.
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Can't get enough of it, preoccupied with it, consumed with it. So I stop and ask you the question, what kind of person are you?
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What kind of person are you? What's your intake of the word of God? I am not saying if you read the
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Bible, that earns salvation. I am saying this, if God has saved you by the merits of another
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Christ Jesus and has given you the word, ought not you to desire it?
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The answer is yes. What's your study time look like? It's interesting, here it says day and night, so he's not saying, you know, at 5 o 'clock you have to get up and have your devotions and no devos, no breakfast.
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Anybody ever do that? No devos, no breakfast? I never heard of that until I moved to New England. That's a word of life saying, no devos, no breakfast.
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And I mean, I'm so carnal, I'm thinking about the band. I mean, I don't know what's going on. Can't listen to devo in the morning, okay.
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No devotions in the morning, I can't eat my breakfast. That's not the tenor here.
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The tenor is, I'm just always thinking about the word of God. I'm always just thinking about what God has said.
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In these last days, Luther said, God has revealed himself in Greek and Hebrew letters. And I'm just thinking about the
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Bible, and I'm just thinking about what he said. Remember 1 Thessalonians 5, it says, pray without what?
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Ceasing. How do you do that? Can you get out of bed? Can you get off your knees? It's just the attitude of prayer.
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That's the exact same here. I've got the attitude of leaning into what God has said in his word, thinking about it.
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And I would say, it probably would be good if you get up in the morning. For me, it's simple. Nine days out of ten,
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I get up in the morning, I walk over, I make a cup of coffee, several cups of coffee, and French press takes four minutes to get ready.
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I go get all my stuff, my Bible, get it all set out, and then I try to read the Bible early in the morning.
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So I've got something in the tank to meditate on throughout the day. Is it wrong to read at lunch or later?
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The answer is no, but it's just a good practice to say, I think I'll just start off my day with the
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Scriptures. To earn God's favor in terms of a standing before him? Well, absolutely not.
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There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because of the work of Jesus. We're not talking about my works.
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I'm saying as the fruit of salvation, as an effect of salvation, as a response, a means to the end for sanctification, we should be men and women of the book.
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Meditate is an imperfect action. It means, in perfect tense, always going on. See, the ungodly, it's a burden, it's not a delight, it shackles, it restricts.
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And the Christian says, I love your word. Calvin said,
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God is favorable to none but those who devote themselves to the study of divine truth. I say it regularly.
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I say it often. No Bible study, no maturation. You'd like to be a
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Christian who's firm, stable, faithful, able to resist temptations, and you say, you know what?
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I'm not going to study the Bible. I'm a visual learner. I go by experience.
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I like tradition. Then I know something about you that it's not too late to stop. But here's what
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I know about you. You're weak and you're immature because maturity comes through the word of God.
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The blessings come through the word of God. God doesn't zap people. You can tell people they want, if they come to the front of the church, to get zapped because they want to grow, they want to mature, they want to say no to sin more often.
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And what they don't realize is, what they forget often, is you want stability.
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You want firmness. You want to prosper spiritually. There's one way and one way only to do it, and God has ordained it's through Bible study.
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Tozer talked about the value of this kind of meditation in his Tozerian way. Read the
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Bible much, read it often, brood over it, think over it, meditate over it day and night.
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When you're awake at night, think of a helpful verse. When you get up in the morning, no matter how you feel, think of a verse and make the word of God the important element in the day.
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The Holy Ghost wrote the word, and if you make much of the word, he would make much of you.
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Isn't it true every saint you respect in this church and in church history was a man or a woman of the book?
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The answer is yes. And the world says, you worship the Bible, Bible -olatry, you're
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Bible worshipers. You know what? I'll take that critique any old day. Thank you.
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I've not departed from the command of his lips. I've treasured the words of his mouth more than my necessary food,
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Job 23. The law of thy mouth is better to me,
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David said, than thousands of gold and silver pieces. It's the word of God because it shows who
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Jesus is and it tells me about my Savior. I was reading Luke 22 this morning thinking there's nobody like Jesus.
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There's nobody that talks like he does, acts like he does, saves like he does. He deserves my attention.
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I thought to myself, who would I walk over to and get down on my knees and say, I adore you,
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I praise you, I honor you, I thank you. And the answer is none but Jesus.
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And as you study the Bible, you'll see he is worthy of our praise. What's the world say?
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What do a lot of evangelicals say? The Bible's old, the Bible's dusty, it's a spirit, you know, is alive and the letter kills.
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Someone wrote to me on social media not that long ago when I was criticizing
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Christian transformation through experience at the expense of the word.
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I was trying to promote the word and downplay experience as truth. Experience is fun, it's fine.
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We all have experiences, but experience isn't the truth. And this is what the commentator said to me. I pray that you too will have an encounter with the living
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God face to face. It may be that the reason that you haven't is that you're sowing the leaven in the witness of someone that has.
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It's especially a dangerous thing to speak against the witness of someone, especially with such a large audience.
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Well, I didn't really know no compromise went outside of WVNE. You want an encounter with God face to face?
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Friends, it's through a book. I do have the encounter with God from one level of glory to another being transformed as I see, as it were, the face of Christ in Scripture.
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That's 2 Corinthians chapter 3. And you see what happens.
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Scripture alone. Scripture sufficient. Scripture inerrant. Scripture infallible. Well, yeah, but what about my experience?
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Well, what about my tradition? And you can see if the Bible is saying one thing, knock, knock, knock, here comes along the
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Catholic catechism, says, does not derive her certainty. This is what
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Catholics say about themselves, about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.
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Scripture to be revered, I would agree. Scripture devoted to Scripture, I would agree. Delight in Scripture, I would agree.
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But the psalmist doesn't say, and in his law and the traditions of the
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Pharisees, I meditate day and night. The answer just is not there. Verse 3, do you know this kind of life, beloved, is worth it?
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This kind of life of blessedness is worth it. Meditating on the law, on the delight of the
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Lord and divine instruction, it's worth it. Look at verse 3. He, this particular man, section 21, row 8, seat
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B, 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.
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And whatever he does, he prospers. There's stability.
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What kind of life do you want? The tumbleweed life, or the life of, you know,
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God has taken me, He's growing trees over here, small little sapling,
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He picks it up, literally the word is transplanted, and He transplants me and replants me right by this irrigation canal.
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Did you know regularly the Old Testament talks about godliness in the association with the tree?
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Psalm 92, the righteous man will flourish like a palm tree, he will grow like a cedar tree in Lebanon.
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How about Jeremiah 17? We always go to verse 9 about the heart, but the first, the verses just before that say this, blessed is the man who trusts in the
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Lord and whose trust is the Lord, for he will be like a tree planted by the water that extends its roots by a stream, and he will not fear the heat when it comes, but its leaves will be green.
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The evergreen Christianity is through the word of God, stability, capacity to say the storms are coming, and we need this, friends, because here's one thing
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I can guarantee your life to be, full of trials and pain and suffering. Have a good day, let's close in prayer.
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We live in a fallen world, and we're fallen people. And when you think about even Christianity, 1
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Peter chapter 2 says it's the will of God for you to suffer, because Jesus, the suffering servant, has followers who suffer.
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Combine our own sin, combine the fallen world, combine age and everything else, this is a hard life.
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And so I need stability, I need growth, I need vitality. I can't stop trials, but here's what
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I need, I need to respond rightly to trials. How do I respond to trials?
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Like Job's wife, or like Job? The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. The tumbleweed says,
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God, I hate you, God, why? You know, I meet people regularly, and they're mad at God, I can't believe you did that,
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I hate you for that. The prosperous, spiritually prosperous person who delights in the law of the
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Lord, sees God's revelation, sees God's plan, sees God's sovereignty, sees
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God's sovereign goodness found in Calvary, sees that if God didn't spare his son, how would he spare anything else for me?
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And I'm just going to rest and trust, and then I'm going to say, you know what, I'm not going to say why,
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I'm not going to say I'm angry with you, I'm going to say the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the
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Lord. Planted by streams of water.
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What are your options? Verse 4, I don't like my other options. I want to run from the other option. I don't like misery.
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I mean, just to give you a break, to just take a breath for a second, I'm just a product of my growing up, and my father made us watch all kinds of shows, and if you're familiar with the 60s and 70s
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TV, Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me, Deep, Dark Depression, Excessive Misery, if you like that kind of life, some of you aren't smiling, it's from a
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TV show. How many people know where the TV show is from? Some do, okay. Of course Crane does.
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He knew the Devo reference too. Look at the options.
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Verse 4, the wicked are not so. Not so what? They're not so prosperous.
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They're not so stable. They're not so firm. They're not so, they're like chaff.
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What a contrast. What's chaff good for? Nothing but to be thrown in the fire, the husk of the kernel of the seed is to be taken off and winnowed, and it just drives away like chaff.
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They're like chaff which the wind drives away. A couple of verses it takes to describe the godly life, the blessed life, the scripture saturated life, and with two words we've got the unbelievers described, not so.
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No fruit, not so. Prospering, not so. Spiritual prospering, not so.
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Avoiding the counsel of the wicked, not so. Forgiven, not so. Redeemed, not so.
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Stable, not so. Steadfast, not so.
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Delight in God's Word, not so. Fruit, not so. They're like chaff.
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An old Baptist said, death with its terrible blast will hurry them into the fire and they will be consumed.
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Empty life, a useless life, a
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Romans 3 life. And again, for emphasis friends, the wicked are not so.
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This isn't the extreme grossly immoral wicked people. These are people that say, you know what?
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I don't desire the Word. I don't desire righteousness. I don't desire to put myself under the superior
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Christ Jesus. And basically the psalmist is saying they're like firewood for hell.
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Paul would say to the church in 1 Corinthians chapter 16, if you don't love the Lord Jesus Christ, you are what?
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Accursed. The tumbleweed goes over the precipice.
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To use 2 Thessalonians language, and these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction. What's the story's conclusion?
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Verse 5, therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment. When it comes to the great white throne judgment, they won't be able to stand.
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They'll cringe. They'll be on their face. They won't be like the righteous who stands in the presence of God with great joy and full of glory,
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Jude 24 and 25. These people will be weighed in the balances and be found what?
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How much chaff does it take over here to balance out the law of God that they've broken? They'll be found wanting, just like King Belshazzar.
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For God will bring every act of judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it's good or evil. But for the
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Christian, for the believer, as we look at the psalm in a Christian way, verse 6, for the
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Lord Yahweh, He knows the way of the righteous. This doesn't mean He just, He knows about it.
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Of course He knows about it. It's omniscient. But the word know, it means to be intimate with, to know personally, to protect, to provide, to sanction over.
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The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Literally, here's a really neat original nuance.
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Not original to me, but in the original language. The Lord is knowing the way of the righteous. He's looking.
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You're in the trial, He's looking. You're in the joys, He's looking. In the valleys, He's looking. In the mountaintops,
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He's looking. You can hear the language, can't you? The Lord knows who are His. I know my sheep and the
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Father knows me. Even I know the Father. Such a contrast. The blessed man,
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God knows me as much as He knows His Son. And the wicked man, it's like when Jesus says in Matthew chapter 7,
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I never what? The way of the wicked will perish.
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Proverbs 10, 28. The hope of the righteous is gladness, but the expectation of the wicked perishes.
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Now, there's different kinds of Psalms. Psalm 2 is messianic. It's all about the
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Messiah. Psalm 22 is messianic. It's all about the Messiah. Psalm 110 is messianic.
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It's all about the Messiah. But even though Psalm 1 isn't messianic, it sure reminds me of the
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Messiah. Harry Ironside, Bible teacher, went to Israel and he went with a man named
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Joseph Flax. And Joseph Flax and he went to some
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Jews and some Arabs and Ironside began to teach. He read
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Psalm 1 and then he said, who is the blessed man of whom the psalm speaks? Who's the one who's never walked in the council of sinners or wicked?
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Who's never stood in the way of sinners? Who's never sat in the seat of mockers? Who was the sinless man?
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Nobody said anything. Flax said, maybe Abraham, our great father.
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Somebody piped in and said, it can't be Abraham. He denied his wife and lied about her. Another hand went up.
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What about our law keeper Moses? It can't be Moses. He killed the man. He lost his temper by the waters of Meribah.
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What about David? What about Job? Silence. And Ironside says, then an elderly
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Jew arose and said, my brothers, I have a little book here. It's called the New Testament. I've been reading it. And if I could believe this book, if I could be sure that it is true,
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I would say that the man of the first psalm, the blessed man, was Jesus of Nazareth.
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And so aren't you glad, Christian friend, that even though we haven't read the Bible like we should have,
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Jesus was a man who was consumed with the word of God. And he read it like he should have.
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Aren't you glad that on the cross, Jesus died for all of your sins, including the sins of disregarding the
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Bible, not being devoted to Bible study, not delighting in the law of God. Aren't you glad those sins have been paid for?
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And if those sins have been paid for, then let's not run back to those same sins. Let's say, since we're forgiven people, since the triune
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God has saved us, the father has chosen us, the son has died for us, the spirit of God regenerated us.
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Since you've done that for me, God, would you increase my appetite for your word? Because even more than for myself,
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I want to honor you and be faithful to the word. God, help me to delight in your word and meditate on it day and night.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you that we can come to you and come to your word.
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Father, how you bless your word, how you bless through your word. I pray that if there's someone here today who's not a
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Christian, I pray that you'd help them to see their poverty of spirit. And as your son
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Jesus said, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs will be the kingdom of heaven. I pray that you would grant them eternal life and repentance and the knowledge of your son.
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And father, for the Christians here today, would you help us almost like it's a
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New Testament passage in 1 Peter to put aside all malice and guile and hypocrisy and envy, help us to put aside all slander so that we could desire your word, so that we could long for the word like newborn babes, pure milk of the word, because we do want to grow.
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We want to be more mature. We want to be more like your son, Jesus Christ.
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So I thank you father for Bethlehem Bible Church and her love for the word. And I pray that you would make us even more desiring with our appetite, that we would long for it even this week.