Wisdom from Psalm 1

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Turn with me please to the very first psalm, Psalm 1, not
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Psalms 1, but Psalm.
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It is a psalm that many of us have memorized that makes it somewhat dangerous to look at because we all know it so well, but it seems in a very small number of verses to give to us such tremendous wisdom for so many different generations and so many different contexts that it is always good to be reminded of what it has to say.
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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.
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But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water.
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It yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does he prospers.
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The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
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The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
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We live in a very complicated day. It is, I think, a frequent experience of most of us that as we consider the world today, we read the news, we think of those things that weigh heavily upon our hearts.
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Sometimes we feel overwhelmed. We feel overwhelmed because there are so many evil things happening in the world.
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There are so many things that in our less faithful moments we recognize could radically change our lives and our situations and make the future very difficult for us.
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And as we consider those things, it is very easy to come to the conclusion that the world is spinning out of control.
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But I find in the words of this psalm such wisdom for every generation and no matter what context you live in.
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Words to live by. And I want to be the blessed man.
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Now, what does it mean to be blessed? Well, unfortunately, there's a lot of false ideas about what it means to be blessed.
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Certainly in our day, most people consider blessings as in physical blessings and things like that.
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But when you really think about what is being said in this particular text and you consider the truth that is being put forward here, the man who is described here or the woman as well, the person who is described here is not the person who is looking for some kind of a special blessing from the
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Lord in the sense of a reward or something like that. When you think about it, this blessed man, there's there's nothing mentioned about houses or lands or anything like that.
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When we think about any description of him, we we have some negative stuff in verse one and what he doesn't do.
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And in verse two, we have positive things that he does do.
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And then verse three describes the resultant state of a consistent life lived, not doing and doing.
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And there is a principle that guides, obviously, both the positive and the negative of verses one and two.
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There's a description that concludes in all that he does, he prospers. And so there have been some who would think that, well, there's there's the physical prospering.
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But when you compare it with the negative, what follows is, well, he is steadfast.
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He is like a tree that yields its fruit and its seed and its leaf does not wither. He has access deep down to the nourishing waters.
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But the wicked are like the chaff, the wind drives away. And when you think about the chaff, you want to think about the winnowing of wheat.
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And when you throw the grain in the air, and most of us have never done this, let's be honest with ourselves, but you've probably seen a movie somewhere where it was done, where the meaningful grain has weight to it.
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And so it comes back down, but the chaff is blown away by the wind because it has no way of holding on to anything.
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It's light, it's airy, it's transient, and it's separated from that which is meaty and real.
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And really, the last two verses gives us the real understanding of how we're to understand the prospering of the righteous in comparison to the wicked.
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It's the judgment. It's that final judgment. It's having eyes that see past not only the short term, but see past this life to eternity itself and give us the wisdom that we need to make the right decisions.
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The wisdom that certainly young people especially should be praying for as young people.
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I think our society has really lost track in that when
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I was a young person, I was warned and told from early on that when
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I got to my late teen years, I mean, I figured once I turned 18,
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I was gonna have to start taking care of myself, that when I got to those late teen years,
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I would be making decisions that would impact the rest of my life.
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And not just in the sense of what kind of jobs I could get or how quote unquote, happy I would be.
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Somehow it was communicated to me back then that I had a responsibility to do something meaningful with my life.
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And my job was to find out how God had gifted me and what he had invested in me and to use those gifts to his honor and glory to the betterment of his kingdom.
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It wasn't all about me, me, me and self -fulfillment and all this stuff that seemingly is so important today to a lot of people.
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And so I recognized, you know, I better do some growing up.
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I better be prepared when that time comes to make wise decisions.
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And wisdom is something that comes only with reflection. You don't just wake up one morning with wisdom.
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It's not like, you know, the wisdom teeth all of a sudden come in and you've got to spend thousands of dollars to get them taken care of at the dentist, which
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I haven't had done yet and so I'm definitely concerned about that. But that's not how you get wisdom.
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I could see and back then you still had contact with older folks.
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And I just recognized that I wasn't going to get wisdom watching my friends.
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I was going to get wisdom watching adults. And even then
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I recognized not every adult, because there were some people that had wasted their lives and so I didn't need to observe them.
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A lot of that seems to be missing today. All that seems to be missing today. And so let's just let's just think together about the wisdom that is communicated.
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And I I want to be basic about this. I want to be straightforward. I want to ask the young people, especially to think about what this this psalm says.
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I mean, all of you, if you're old enough to understand what I'm saying, I want you to hear what wisdom is found here.
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And maybe some of us older folks need to be reminded. The blessing that is spoken of here is the blessing that comes in a person that knows how they're living their life is pleasing to God and that when they stand before God someday, they're going to be able to say,
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I sought to follow your truth. And there is absolutely nothing better than that.
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You don't have to worry about what the world thinks about you. You don't have to look for man's praises. You have a you have a steadfastness.
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You have a patience. You have a comfort in difficulty.
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You have a contentment in whatever the Lord gives to you. You want to be that blessed man, you might be a blessed woman who who when the trials of life come and if we face real difficulties in the future in this land, which
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I think we may well face much more difficult times in the future than we have in the past, is the type of person that people recognize really has something real in their life.
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You don't want to be a fake. You don't want to be one of the people that when the real difficult times come, we just fade away, try to melt into the scenery.
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Well, what are the things we don't want to do? Well, everybody knows verse one, walking, standing, sitting.
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There's been all sorts of sermons about that. I'm not saying they're wrong. I think that we can just summarize the fact that walking, standing and sitting is pretty much what you do when you're active.
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Other than laying down, there ain't much else that could be said. So it's it's the activities of life.
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It's what you do in life. And the blessed man is one who does not direct his paths, direct his friendships, his relationships, his way of thought, what he exposes himself to in certain areas, specifically the counsel of the wicked.
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Well, you saying that the wicked can never say anything is true? No. No, I have a feeling that some of the doctors
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I've gone to were wicked men in the sense that they were right with God, but didn't mean that what they told me was wrong about medicines or whatever else it might be.
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No, the counsel of the wicked is counsel that comes forth from a wicked heart. And so in other words, we need to recognize that wisdom has to find its origin first and foremost in God and in his revelation.
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And that means looking to the wisdom of this world and thinking, well, I can I can look to the world for its wisdom in this area, but then
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I've got my religious life over here that results in Christian schizophrenia. I meet a lot of Christian schizophrenics and they don't really trust what the
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Bible says because they're really not convinced fully and completely that God has spoken in it.
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They walk in the counsel of the wicked because they've divided their minds. And so you've got this area over here and I'll go ahead and I'll I'll embrace worldly wisdom here, not realizing that what we believe is
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Jesus Christ, the creator of all things. If he's the creator of all things, then you got to start there with everything. And that's actually going to unify all of knowledge is going to give you a way of of not having to be infallible yourself because, you know, the one who is.
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We don't want to be Christian schizophrenics, so we don't want to walk in the counsel of the wicked.
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We don't want to stand in the way of sinners. And that's that one's pretty easy.
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The way of sinners, the way sinners walk, the direction they're going, the paths they're following. We we don't want to find guidance.
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In the way of sinners, those who are rebelling against God, we. Especially young people, they want to be so accepted by their peers.
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And so you end up walking in the way of sinners. Now, you might say, well,
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I have to because they live next to me, we walk down the same road, not the same thing. Walking in the way of sinners is going with them in their ways of behavior and speech and the jokes that they tell and the things that they do.
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There comes a time when you realize that I don't find the light in that. That's not something
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I want to do. I know that God's not going to be pleased if I do that. And and eventually you all the ways, you know, you're really growing up is when you realize
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I don't want the approval of people that God is going to someday condemn. He's condemned their way of life, and they want me to live like them and look like them and dress like them and speak like them and you don't want to stand the way of sinners.
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You don't want to sit in the seat of scoffers. Oh, there's so many scoffers today. So many who scoff at God and scoff at those who would dare to live a life that has any semblance of morality to it and any meaning to it.
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Morality and meaning normally go hand in hand. In that sense, we're we're seeking to honor God, honor our creator, honor our bodies the way he made us to get scoffed, scoffed at to do that.
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And if you make decisions, if you make decisions as a young person, to to enter into a field of employment that will actually allow you to continue to minister and to have freedom and ministry and things like that, and maybe not make as much as other people do, you'll be scoffed.
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You might have people say you you're being foolish. You're being foolish.
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When I accepted a scholarship to go to Grand Canyon, here, this is when Grand Canyon was very different than it is now.
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It's much smaller back then. A lot of folks thought, oh, well, you know, our best student in our high school is sort of settling for something else.
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They didn't understand the idea of wanting to have a Christian education or things like that.
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They sort of scoffed at that. But even more so if they know what your real delight is and what what captures your heart, verse two, his delight is in the law of the
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Lord, not his law. He meditates day and night. There's something completely different about the blessed man.
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Because the counsel of the wicked and the way of sinners and the seed of scoffers, that doesn't get him delight.
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Now, here's where you really find out, I think, looking in your own heart, where this, how this psalm speaks to you.
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Because it's one thing to look at the law of the Lord, look at the scriptures, look at God's revelation out of duty, out of a sense of duty, because, well, those weird people at church are going to ask me about things like this.
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I suppose I should do this. Or young people. Well, my parents tell me to do this.
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And that's the only reason I do it. You really find out there's a mirror held up as a light shown into our hearts.
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When we ask the question, does this what delights us? What does our heart really set on?
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And you know, every person in here knows how to answer that question. Some of you right now your your thoughts are wandering.
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What are you thinking about? What are you thinking about? What you think about is what's flowing forth from your heart.
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It's what delights your heart. And so if you constantly find yourself meditating upon and and delighting in the things of the world rather than the things of God, wanting to listen to the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers, shines a bright light upon what's really inside of us.
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So the contrast is that the reason we don't want the counsel of the stand and sit is because we delight in the law of the
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Lord because we delight in the Lord. We want to be like him and we recognize his law is good and right and just and it leads us in the paths of life and it protects us from doing all the things that will end up scarring us and and limiting our our happiness and our fulfillment in God.
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And so on his law, he meditates day and night. We love God's truth. We love it.
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It's not a dreary thing. It's something we love. And when you really have that kind of a internal reality to yourself, then you're like a tree planted by streams of water.
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Now everybody here in the desert understands this one. You know, maybe some people where there's trees everywhere.
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I was just up in Colorado, there's trees that were having to cut down trees to keep them around and keep them from getting too close to houses or forest fires and stuff like that.
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And around here, you plant a tree in your yard, it's like adopting a child, you know,
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I mean, that poor thing, it's gonna sit out there and get irradiated by the sun every single day.
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And you've got to make sure it's got enough water and all the rest of this stuff. And, and, and certain trees ain't supposed to be here and Midwesterners drag them out here anyways.
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And we understand a tree planted by streams of water.
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Well, what's a stream of water? That might be our problem. That happens after rains for about three minutes, right?
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No, no, no, no, no. There are actually places where there are streams that flow pretty much all the time.
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Can you believe that some of you who are desert rats, you just know, it really does happen.
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It's amazing. I, I rode my bike up the top of Mount Evans a little over a week ago.
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Mount Evans is 14 ,000 feet above sea level. And there was still something,
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I'll have to define this, called snow. Packed together, and that means that there were, there were streams going down next to the road where the snow was melting.
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And this is a natural thing in the world, believe it or not. It's great. And a tree planted by a stream of water, it doesn't have to worry nearly so much about rainstorms and things like that.
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There's a steady source of life and nourishment. And its leaf, it yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.
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Everybody knew the good trees. Everybody knew the trees that had the good root systems. And everybody knew the ones that were, you know, one year one thing, one year another, don't know, they're sort of iffy.
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There's a consistency in the life of the blessed man. And again,
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I would suggest to you, only, only the Spirit of God can make you want to be a consistent
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Christian. Want to consistently present to God a heart of wisdom. Want to consistently glorify
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God in your life, and only the Spirit of God can make you want to do that.
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And when it says in all he does, he prospers. You see, if he's constantly meditating upon the law of God, if that's his delight, then the point is he will prosper in his pursuit of holiness and righteousness in his life.
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It doesn't mean he's going to have the Lamborghini and all the rest of that stuff. That's not, that's not godly prosperity.
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When God lays upon his heart, a desire to pursue a certain area in life of, of improving that life and being more holy and more like Christ and so on and so forth, he will prosper in that.
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That really is the secret of when it says, you know, if you, if you trust and believe, then you can move this mountain.
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That's addressed to the person who's truly trying to die to self and live to God.
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And that person will prosper, but the wicked are not so. Well, the wicked may prosper in the things of this world, but they will not prosper in being truly content and happy because they don't know
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God and they don't have a relationship with him. There's no prosperity for them.
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There's no prosperity for them. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment of sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
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How much do we want to be in the congregation of the righteous? When we, when we read the book of Revelation, we, we see the congregation of the righteous.
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We see those, that great crowd surrounding the throne and, and they're raising their voices in worship.
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How much do we really want to be there? For the
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Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. And no matter where you live, no matter what your situation is, these words ring true because when it says the
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Lord knows the way of the righteous, that's not some statement about the extent of God's knowledge.
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See, the way of the righteous is, is the life, the path that is being followed by that righteous person.
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And the Lord knows that way. In other words, you're never separated from him. No matter where he directs your path, no matter how difficult the road is, no matter how trying it is, no matter how others may scoff and mock you, as long as you are treading the path that he has laid out for you, he's always with you.
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He knows the way of the righteous. He never loses track of you. Other people might.
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Sometimes you may feel like you're completely alone. It doesn't matter.
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The Lord knows the way of the righteous. The way of the wicked perishes.
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The way of the righteous, the Lord will always know that. He will, his eye will always be upon you.
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His presence is always your promise. Now you may feel it more strongly at some times than others, but you have his promise.
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He will never forsake you. He will never abandon you. And if his truth and his presence is the most important thing to you, then you, that is what gives the men of God and the women of God the strength that we've seen down through the centuries to stand up against such adversity and persecution and difficulty.
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The Lord knows the way of the righteous. That should be a promise that you, you bank on.
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That should be a promise that you don't, you don't just forget it. You should go, you know what? I want to stand in the congregation of the righteous.
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I don't want to be one of those that is excluded. I want to know that God's eye is constantly upon me.
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Not hiding. God's eye is constantly upon me. No matter where he's called me, what he's called me to do, his eye is upon me.
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That's promise. That's promise that we can hold on to and consider to be very precious in the midst of all the difficulties that may accompany the path of the righteous.
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So these words written so long ago, it doesn't matter what culture they're spoken in. It doesn't matter what language they're spoken in.
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We read them and considered them this evening in a language that would not exist for millennia when they were first written, and yet their truth remains solid in each of the experiences of godly men and women down through the ages.