Father, we bless Your name and we do say that You are great and Your Son Jesus is great and Your salvation is great, Lord. May we always have hearts that sing of Your greatness in all seasons. You have forgiven us our sins and made us new. Lord, we offer up a prayer especially for just our country tonight we pray You would give Lord, wisdom to Lord, just different entities in the government to figure out exactly what’s happened, why it’s happened. We pray that last night’s event wouldn’t be manipulated and used in a bad way politically. We pray it wouldn’t cause we pray it wouldn’t cause more unrest or some other way that evil likes to take situations and bring more evil out of them, Lord. Lord, I pray for for the man who died by jumping on his wife and daughter to save them, Lord. Who literally took a bullet to save his family. God, we pray a kind of peace that we couldn’t begin to understand, Lord, but we know they need it. And His church, His His acquaintance, His friends, they all need it, Lord.

Lord, I pray for the family of the shooter. What a strange thing to process. Lord, we ask all kinds of questions and be scrutinized, I’m sure, in many ways for a long time. Lord, I pray for them that they would, as they even grieve Him, that You would give them, Lord, the grace to endure. And if they don’t know You, I pray they would, Lord, know the Gospel or through even this somehow know Your goodness.

So, Lord, we do pray for America. Lord, as wicked as it’s become, we pray, Lord, still yet, You would draw many to salvation. And, Lord, still yet, our country would remain faithful

to the witness of those who first came here who loved You, who preached Your Gospel, who honored Your Word. Lord, we still pray that for our country.

Bless our tithe, our offering. It’s unto You. And we pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

We’re going to be in Psalm chapter 1. I want to look at this with you. In all fairness, I preached this chapter four years ago. But it was one of those COVID specials where I preached it into my microphone at home and then posted it and you were supposed to listen to it Sunday morning with your family and do the questions or whatever we gave you. So, we’ll call that a sermon, but was it, you know. So, this, we’re in the room together. But, again, I haven’t copied and pasted. This is hopefully… Same truth, different perspective, deeper perspectives, just kind of revisiting this psalm. And I think a lot of the psalms are good for that. Psalms are perennial things. You know, you can’t really read a psalm and intend on never reading it again. The purpose of psalms are what they give us, the special word we need to hear in different seasons of life. Whether those be joyous seasons, whether those be seasons of lamentation or struggling with sin or feeling alone. That’s really the treasure of psalms is they are perennial for us in the seasons that we need them so badly. But this psalm asks us a question. And the question is this. What is the key to true happiness? And you read this psalm, that and you don’t think that’s what it’s talking about, but it really is what it’s talking about. Because verse 1 is the word blessed. You could also translate that happy or favored. So what is the favored life? What is the happy life? What does it mean to be one who is blessed? How do you get there? How do you get there? What is that? And it’s different, you know, from different voices. Is it possessions? Is it owning the right things? Then the opposite, you have like the minimalist movement today where happiness is not owning anything or as few things as possible. Or is success what you can do in your life? Is your success some relationship? You could finally have. Is success how much money you could have? Or is success something innate? Is it innate? It’s just it’s in you. There’s a video, the actor Will Smith floating around. I was watching this past week and he said that. He said he had the power to buy everything, but he found not his relationships, not his kids. Not his stuff can make him happy until he came to this final realization. Happiness is inside of him. I’m not sure about that. I’m not sure about that. What does it mean to be blessed? What does it mean to really be happy? Verse 1, it says, 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. Scoffers. So the word is influence there. That’s what he’s talking about. Talk about influence. Who’s influencing you? And you don’t realize how much on a regular basis you’re being influenced. Think about these terms that you’re very familiar with. Trendsetter, right? Trendsetter. Trendsetter. Somebody who does something and other people follow, whether that’s, we were watching this documentary on national parks last night and we almost ran out of this, or went extinct, this very special bird down in the Everglades. And that’s one of the reasons why the Everglades were made into a national park is because it became a fashion for women to wear plumes on their hats. Even some, and it was hilarious as I saw the videos, you had these women walking down the street. New York City with full birds on their head, right? So trends catch hold and it takes off like wildflower, wildflower, fire, flower, fire. The phrase influence, influencer. People today want to be influencers. That’s its own category. And some people are. Some people are video game influencers, right? So what do they talk about video games? They play video games. They’re someone people look to to learn about that category, whatever it is. Cars, culture, they’re an influencer. How about propagandist? How about propagandist? Makes me think of the Potomkin villages the Russians would build. So these beautiful false villages on the edge of the sea. So when the Empress would come by or even like American journalists would come by, they’d go, Oh, look, communism is great. Look how wonderful it’s working out for the Russians, right? And their poor people would be inland hidden away. Popular culture. Well, that’s popular culture. That’s what, you know, it’s what we believe, it’s what we do, it’s what we listen to. Popular. What about a publicist? Somebody that makes sure somebody looks good all the time, right? It’s not real. What about a marketer? Someone who knows how to sell. You need this thing, man. You better buy this. Only five left. Only two left. What about a political activist? It’s one we hear all the time. Pushing a cause through a megaphone. Or a lobbyist. Someone who’s trying to create political change through influencing. In Washington, so you can’t escape and I can’t escape the reality that we’re all influenced all the time. Influence is pushing in on you, on me all the time. Someone, some, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. Always. Never forget this. You are supremely impressionable. Your worldview, your morals, your political opinions are always being shaped by someone or something. You’re clay to everything around you. And God’s made us that way. It’s not to say something bad about people. People are learners. We are. Imitators by nature. So you cannot think people have so much natural discernment, though, or an iron will not to fall for a great many ruses or deceptive spiritualities. Think about things like the fad of the childless marriage. I think we’ve talked about that in past months of what’s called a dink. A dink. A dual income, no kids family. That’s us. We’re dual income, no kids. It’s a thing. It’s a thing. Fashion obsessions. You’ve probably seen high schoolers and middle schoolers over the last few years. Boys bring back mullets. Greatest crime of them all. The mullet coming back. But then it’s more serious. Mormonism is a thing. And that’s not a small outfit. They’ve got a lot of people. And they still are good at getting a lot of people to believe that stuff. Same’s true with Scientology. It’s stereotypical when we talk about teenagers that they’re easily impressionable and influenced by their peers. And sometimes teenagers make life-altering decisions based off poor choices they make in their teenage years. And then probably the ugliest, most grossest example of that today is college campuses and protests. I mean, it’s been proven time and time again. A lot of college students that are protesting whatever they’re protesting, they’re anti because they’re supposed to be. They have no idea why. They don’t know the history of what they’re protesting. They’re just for a righteous cause because they were told it’s a righteous cause. As Darcy and Dawson have gotten older, I’ve had to, I’ve had to be a little more careful because the kids they’re exposed to and different things they do around, even neighborhood kids, they’re hearing things that, whoa, I don’t want you to be hearing about that. You know, I don’t want you to be shaped by that. I’ve got to be careful about how my own kids are influenced by their peers now. So get it out of your head that you are in control of yourself all that much. All that much. Jeremiah, the prophet in chapter 17, verse 9, he says, the heart is deceitful above all things. And it’s desperately sick. Who can understand it? Who can understand it? And think about, think about Jeremiah’s context. We’re talking about God’s people who so often were under the influence of pagans. So often. Where these people who were shown the plain truth, they were rebellious against it. And then Jesus has something in, in the early part of his ministry that’s telling. It says, now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, this is John chapter two, many believed in his name. They saw the signs that he was doing, but Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them. Think about that. Because he knew all people and needed no one. To bear witness about him, for he himself knew what was in man.

So if we’re highly impressionable and the world’s trying, all kinds of things are trying to influence us, what you and I need really is a great deal, a great deal of humility and probably a little bit of trepidation. In regards to the exposure we have to different things in life. I need the humility to recognize that about myself, that I can easily be led astray. And I need to be really careful, a bit fearful about what is coming in my ears and my eyes. So when we read verse one, again, we can comfortably understand the psalmist to mean this. Walking in the counsel of the wicked, when he says, that’s not the blessed one, we can assume he means, don’t do that because you’ll take that advice. When he says, standing in the way of sinners, he means if you do that, you will stay on that pathway. And when he says, sit in the seat of scoffers, if you do that, you’ll become a faithless sort of barbaric, loud mouth deriding all that’s good and true. And that’s what he means. And that’s what he means. And that’s what he means. So these are very, very plain things said, yet they fall out of our ears so quick. How much darkness, how much worldly influence is pushing in in so many different ways. So what do we do then? What is it for us to do? The thing for us to do is to guard our hearts and minds. That’s what we ought to do. You and I need to guard our hearts and minds if so many worldly influences are pushing in all the time. The Proverbs writer, he says, keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it, it flows the springs of life. So you and I, as God’s people, we have the spirit, which means we have in some measure, seen and believed truth, but still God’s people, older New Testament, who know God’s truth, can’t assume I’m good. I’m good. No problem. I can, I can hang around the wicked. I can take advice from the wicked. I can, I can, you know, commune fellowship with the wicked and still maintain who and what I am. You think too much of yourself.

Paul says in Romans to renew our minds day by day. What happens if we don’t renew our minds? They become dull things that are so much more susceptible to lies and to wickedness. And so here are two popular old sort of adages that I think help us think about the way we’re influenced. Okay. First one is, you know, we’re not going to be able to live in a the frog being boiled. You’ve heard that one, right? And the point is you put a frog in water. I’ve never tried this. I’ve heard it so many times that I assume it works. If not, it still makes the point I’m trying to make, but you put a frog in water and you slowly, slowly turn up that water. Um, and the frog never notices he’s being cooked. He’s being cooked, right? That, that is a lot of how influence, um, works. In our world, very, uh, passive sort of influences, um, all around us. And it’s not overt. It’s not overt and obvious, um, to, to me. It requires sometimes that there are the people in our lives who we love and we care about. You got to kind of keep them at arm’s distance. If you want to call it like you’re a good time, Charlie, or you’re, you’re, you’re fun buddy, someone you grew up with someone you care about, but you have to kind of keep them at arm’s distance. Ask yourself what’s in their heart. Really though, when I spend time with them, they’re not necessarily leading me in a bad direction or they, I mean, they’re not saying things that are wicked true, but they’re influencing you somehow. And if you find yourself constantly spending time with someone whose ultimate aim in life is not Christ, you’ll find your shift from that higher upward calling to the things of this life. You’re going to be spiritually brought down. If you’re not spending your time around, people who bring you up. So we say these things to teenagers. You are who you hang around, right? You are who you hang around. But here’s the other one that I think is, is just as important and angel of light. That’s, that’s a biblical phrase. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. There, there’s this popular, um, video clip on the internet called the angel of light. On the internet right now of this minister, um, telling all of his followers that his views on heterosexuality, homosexuality, and he says the umbrella of homosexuality, it’s evolved. It’s evolved. And he is sure that if Jesus were alive today, Jesus would approve of it. And Jesus would say, he just didn’t know today what he knew back then. Jesus just didn’t know enough back then.

And, and so you, you have how many people who are watching that. I think, well, this is a Christian guy. This is someone, and he’s taught me. And so, oh, wow. I didn’t know Jesus didn’t know enough. I’m enlightened now. I’ll give you another one that I think is very subtle, but has been very effective is, uh, Sarah Young’s Jesus calling book. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Sarah Young and Jesus calling. Those are wildly popular. They’re very popular. They’re very popular. They’re popular. They’ve got them for kids, teenagers, your pets. I mean, they’re, they’ve got a version for everybody in there. They’re at Walmart. They’re anywhere serious. Jesus calling is not someone’s quiet time or devotions from different scriptures. And then she writes down her devotional thoughts and the original Jesus calling and publishers have since taken it out. These were things she said, Jesus spoke to her correctly because she just wanted more than the Bible had to say. So she was looking for, a fresh revelation from the Lord. And so as her pen moved, she was getting fresh and real stuff from Jesus. And those are what these little devotions of Jesus calling you are.

It’s important to know she’s revised those as time has gone on and there’s been different additions. So I don’t know how you revise what Christ has spoken to you, and as one writer noted, the Jesus of, of Jesus calling in Sarah Young’s book sounds a lot more like a middle-aged white woman in the 21st century than it does the Jesus of the Bible. If you read them all and get the tone and feeling of them, the point is there are deceptive little voices all over the internet, books, a plenty who are claiming to point you in the direction of Jesus.

But then in the 21st century, you don’t have to be really honest about, um, well, I’m preaching from one tablets or phones or televisions. Um, it’s not an eightly evil. And so I’m not saying that if you’re a Christian, you shouldn’t have access to the internet. It’s terrible, but you have to admit to have a device that can show you anything you want anytime you want and tell you anything you want to know whenever you want to know it. That comes with a lot of dangers, doesn’t it? It comes with a lot of dangers. And some of the things we consume, are we asking the question of should this be consumed? Should this be consumed? It’s, it’s like you watch your favorite show or you listen to your favorite guy. And he makes jokes that are off color and he uses words that Christians shouldn’t use. And that’s not a big deal to you. You don’t think it’s a big deal. And then the next time you bump your head on the cabinet, a word comes out and you go, I don’t usually use that word. How come I just use that word? Or, or you take the Lord’s name in vain. You don’t usually take the Lord’s name in vain, but you did it this time. It’s because you’re, letting influences in your life, even more subtle than I think the poor media choices themselves that we pick. You and I, our minds are being shaped by the medium itself. And again, that’s something that, that secular sociologists note as well. We’re, we’re, we’ve programmed ourselves to, especially when it comes to micro content, you know, like reels, like those five, six, five, 10 videos, you’re going from somebody diving in the Bahamas to someone blowing up fireworks and then someone catching a big fish and then a kid doing something funny. And we’re training our minds to, to live in this kind of neutral non-space where the bulk of our time is wasted doing nothing rather than thinking, actively living, doing something productive for the Lord. We’ve allowed not just what we think, but even how we think and how we process to be changed. So those are really big and important things that if we’re not wise and careful for our own minds and hearts, we’re going to be influenced negatively, I think by active and passive influences and how we’re perceiving people, how we should act in situations, what we think is important. You have to put all those influences, all those influences on the table all the time and ask this person, that, um, that media influencer, that show, that movie, that thing, is this something I should be consuming all the time? And the caveat is there are things that I think that are amoral, like the news, like, well, I’m not listening to the news unless it’s from a Christian and he better be a pastor too, to make sure it’s really Christian news. I get that we can’t always have Christian everywhere we go, but, you can get obsessive with the news, and then you care more about your political party and what’s happening there than you are the gospel of Jesus, and you’ve met that person, right? They’re a Christian and a Republican, but boy, they’re a Republican before they’re a Christian, right? So even amoral things become immoral when they are too important to us. How about that? Amoral things become immoral when they become far too important to us individually.

Okay, next level of that is for us thinking about our children, our children. Um, I, I am a big believer in homeschool. Um, I think even non-believers even today take homeschool to be, um, maybe one of the only valid options simply because the public school system, um, has become a place of indoctrination, and that’s not even a place of indoctrination. It’s not even just because of what they’re being taught or what the government wants taught, but influences from kids, influences from kids. Um, I can remember as a 8-, 9-, 10-year-old, all the things I learned on school bus on the ride home that I shouldn’t have never heard about, shouldn’t have known anything about, right? And so homeschooling is a, is a way for me to say, I’m going to have to guard my heart. Now, I’m not saying that’s wrong. It’s wrong to send your kid to public school. I’m not saying that’s wrong to send your kid to public school. I’m saying we as parents have to be really careful about the things that our children, the people that our children are being, um, exposed to. Public school is dangerous in this. If you have a child who’s highly impressionable, which is a lot of them, right, they’re getting more time being influenced at school than you’re having with them at home often. So when they’re gone seven, eight hours a day and you’re saying, I’m going to have to guard my heart, I’m going to have to guard my heart. You’re seeing them and your day spent working, doing whatever, and you’re wore out and tired and we make dinner and we go to bed. The quality even of discipleship is vastly different. It’s different. And then there’s peer pressure and then there’s fitting in and all those things. So that can be a very powerful force. Media, that is another landmine for children today. Uh, children with screens. I think it’s become an unhealthy norm, right? And I know we say things like, well, my kid’s good because we watch with my kid. We like, we check on that, but I’ve certainly heard, and maybe you have two of a child getting hooked on something and the parent had no idea how they were seeing that. I mean, I, you know, I will spare the story, but I’ve seen that up and close in someone’s life. And that’s, that’s terrible. You know, a child has been exposed to something in some way and you didn’t know that because they had their magic mirror in which to look. So what is your child consuming? What is your child consuming? It’s shocking when we, we watch some of these old movies with our kids like, oh, we should watch that movie because that one was hilarious. I’ll give you an example. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie heavyweights, heavyweights, hilarious. Okay. But I got on there to look up heavyweights, to watch it with my kids. This is going to be hilarious. Whoa. That early nineties, PG movies. Movie had a lot of language and a lot of taking the Lord’s name in vain. A lot of stuff that I would, I just don’t want my kids to watch, especially at the ages that they are. What you put in, it’s going to come back out somehow. You can’t get around that. You just can’t get around that here, but here’s deeper on that too. I think sometimes our media choices are still poor because we watch shows. We watch things where we really don’t want the interactions and the relationships in that show to be in our house. What I mean is this, a lot of kid shows today, they are filled with very smart aleck relationships where the son and the daughter, they’re very snide. They’re very smart out. They, they’re very disrespectful to their parents. No one took the Lord’s name in vain. No one said anything bad. No one took their clothes off, but they’re learning behaviors and habits. That are probably going to come into my home because we were just watching that as a ha ha funny, but then they watch all these shows where this happens. And so it’s normal to them because they see it’s happening in the world that kids can act like this toward their parents.

And you say, well, you’re thinking too hard about all this.

You’re thinking too little. So you’ve got to guard your child’s heart in many ways. And the thing about children, even more so than adults are children. If we’re clay, I mean, they’re, they’re just like goop. I mean, they’re so moldable and they’re so shapeable and they’re going to be shaped by the things they see and hear. Love your children enough to guard their hearts. Passive and active influences are everywhere. How are you influencing them? How are you influencing them? How are you influencing them? How are you influencing them? How are you influenced? We do think about the verse in, but not of, well, this sounds like we should just be monks in caves. Not at, not at all. I think that there is a level to which you and I as Christians, we engage the world. We need to know the world we live in. Like you need to be familiar with the landscape that you live in. But let, so let me give you a really bad example though. I think of this and it drives me crazy every summer. Churches do these church at the movies series. So, so it’s ridiculous on the face of it, right? Like we’re going to, we’re going to get the biggest movies out and then we’re going to go listen to a sermon and this guy is going to pull gospel themes from this movie. And, and so we’re going to go and there’s going to be characters from that movie. And it’s very popular. Churches do it all over the U.S. Church at the movies, church movies. It didn’t start with the word of God. It starts with a movie and we’re going to pull gospel themes out of it. But a lot of these churches will do movies that no one should be seeing in the first place at all. Like that, that movie Barbie that came out. No child needs to show up to church and their pastor is preaching a sermon on what there is to learn about God and Jesus from a movie that your child and you should never see in the first place. So it’s very, it’s very confused to me. It’s very confused. And that’s when I’m not interacting. With the world. That’s when I’m not evangelizing the world. That’s why I’m just straight up being influenced by the world. Straight up being influenced by the world. And then there is a sense of selflessness and humility, not just to recognize I’m going to be influenced, but also at the same time to recognize, hold on, I’m a father of Jesus. And if I’m pouting because I have to cut off certain media in my life or I need to cut certain people out of my life because they’re bad influence. Hold on. The call is to follow Christ. Not see how close I can get to worldly entertainment and still get away with it. So there’s a deeper issue when we don’t care what is being poured into our hearts and minds or our children’s hearts, all the minds. And it’s just like an annoying conversation or thing I don’t want to think about. Guard your heart. Guard your family’s heart.

So if true happiness isn’t found in anything. The world has to give or teach. Don’t look there. The psalmist says here in verse two, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. He’s like a tree planted by streams of water. That yield its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. And all that he does, he prospers.

This is a common theme really throughout Old and New Testament. Just the simple illustration of things need water. And it’s not because God only had that one illustration. So we had to keep using it over and over again. It’s because God has made that so plain to us. In creation, that we would catch this.

In Ezekiel chapter 19, the prophet says, Your mother was like a vine in a vineyard, planted by the water, fruitful and full of branches, by reason of abundant water. So Ezekiel is lamenting what Israel once was. Why was she that thing, so healthy and fruitful? Because she was planted by abundant water. But then later, he says, The vine was plucked up in fury, cast down to the ground. The east wind dried up its fruit. They were stripped off and withered. As for its strong stem, fire consumed it. Now it is planted in the wilderness, in a dry and thirsty land. So it’s a simple illustration in creation. I’m not a farmer. I don’t got a green thumb. But I haven’t had to cut my grass very much this past month because there’s not been much rain. So putting two and two together, I think the rain is needed for the grass to grow. And some of it’s become brown even. And it looks wilted. Plants, vegetation need water. Living things need water. Guess what you need? Water. Darcy was trying so hard to convince Josie’s four-year-old mom last night at dinner that human bodies, that you Josie, you are at least 60% made of water. She didn’t like that. She didn’t understand that. But it’s true. We need, we are water.

You are water. We don’t need only the words of God. That’s what’s being said here. That’s what’s being said here. God is life. And God gives life. He’s a fountain of life. By which we drink. And we’re satisfied. And we’re nourished. And that, in essence, is the fountain of life. And the rest of all peerless truth is so plainly taught in this Psalm. And so plainly shown in creation. So that we don’t miss it. So the only place that this truth is hiding is in plain sight. God is saying to each of us, it is His word by which we are nourished. By which we are given true life. By which we are satisfied. And it’s just water. It’s just water. I can’t give gasoline sometimes. I can’t pour some bleach on that grass. I can’t do anything but drink water. Just water. Notice that it says, it is His delight. It is His delight. That means it’s got the thrust of extreme pleasure.

What is the Psalmist plainly saying to each of us and in our Christian hearts and lives?

That Jesus and His words are the thing that should influence us alone. That’s it. Jesus and His words are the one thing that are to influence us and that we’re supposed to be extremely satisfied with. That’s a real paring down of influences right there. Christ and His word. And I think the fight there is believing that. Believing that. Do you really believe that about Jesus and His word? So there’s a supernatural humility that you and I need, not to just realize how susceptible we are to evil, but how dependent we are upon having the word of God alone. Like how much I need that. Surely I don’t have near enough faith in how much I depend on just the word of God. You know if I did, I’d read it a lot more than I do. I’d rush to church on Sundays with greater joy than I do. I study it with all my heart more than I do.

And I do, so let me, and I do, so I want to push back on Bible versus words of Jesus for a minute. I think, you know, we can talk about church life a lot about Bible study. You should be studying the Bible. You should be studying the Bible. You should know that thing. And I think the thrust is, that is good. The problem is, when the Bible becomes this widget in the Christian life and the people at church say I’m supposed to study it, and it’s this book full of really good things that I need to know, and it is that. It is that. But I forget the one who wrote it. It is a necessary religious text. And that’s not enough. That’s not enough. The Bible can’t be a necessary religious text alone. It’s got to be the words of God spoken to his people. It’s going to change your joy and your motivation in approaching it. So as much as we study the Bible and we get dulled to, I don’t feel like studying the Bible today. I don’t want to do Bible study today. Well, I’m sure you don’t. And you know why? You stop rejoicing that the God of the universe spilled the blood of his son to save you. You’ve stopped believing that word. Because man, you’re telling me the God of the universe who gave his son to bleed and die for me, he wrote words on a page, and they’re somewhere accessible to me? Like that’s different than how we think about the Bible, isn’t it? It’s like they got the ESV, the NIV, the Legacy, the football player’s Bible, the stay-at-home mom’s Bible, the bloody Bible, and it’s good. You can pick the one you like, and it’ll help you out. Like, no, no, no, no. This is God-breathed stuff. So it’s a fight. It’s a fight for me to stay in love with the Bible. Truly. Truly. And I find me dragging myself to morning devotionals, and I find myself dragging myself to writing a sermon, when I’m in seasons where I’ve lost that, that, you know, just enraptured love of what it is for what it is, as God’s words to me to show me who he is for my joy and life in him alone. So I’ve got to fight to keep that mentality.

So we need that lowliness that God enables to have the faith to believe. Jesus. Jesus, his person, and Jesus, his words, what he has to say to each of us, that’s an extreme pleasure for me. That’s an extreme delight for me. There is no delight so wonderful as hearing what God has to say about himself. Wow.

And when I listen to Jesus talk about how wonderful he is, it makes me a lot healthier. A lot healthier.

Like a healthy tree. You know, you have people who, they try to plant their own garden sometimes, and they’ll get like their first tomato, or their first pepper, or their first anything, and it’s the size of a marble, you know. But they show it to you with joy, like, look, it’s a real tomato. We’re going to cut it up and eat it tonight. And you’re like, that’s great. You know. Very good. Very good. But you know a tomato should be the size of a softball. Right? You know what the real thing looks like. And it’s the same with God’s word when we truly give ourselves to it versus half-heartedly. I always have this image. When I was a kid, I remember we went to Puerto Rico. First time I’d ever been to Puerto Rico, and we all went to see all my grandfather’s siblings, or siblings and, you know, my mom’s cousins and all that stuff. And in my Aunt Gelamina’s backyard, she had this big, beautiful mango tree. I remember the first morning waking up in Puerto Rico, roaming around and making my way to the backyard, and there’s this big, beautiful mango tree. My dad is up in it, and he’s just looking all around, and boy, he’s pulling fruit off here, and he’s pulling fruit off there, and it was just beautiful, and it was strong.

Friend, are you drawn from Christ? Are you drawn from Christ? That He would be your joy, that He would be your life, that He would be your extreme pleasure, and that He would make you into something beautiful and holy. Holy. God wants you to be holy as He is holy. God wants you to desire the things that He desires. He wants to shape you into something that this world can’t give. So friends, let us not force-feed ourselves the Scriptures. Let us guzzle it. Let’s not take it as medicine, but as water for one who is in a parched land. Let’s fall in love with the Author so that we would cherish His words, and those words would change us. Do you need to up your quiet time game? Maybe. Do you need to study the Word of God with greater fervor? Probably. Should you memorize Scripture? Should we memorize Scripture more? Yeah. Oh, but first, believe the Gospel. Believe the Gospel. Believe that good Word. And you won’t be able to stop listening and loving the words of God. Amen.

Amen. And notice he also talks about meditation. Meditation. And we’ve been talking about that, you know, over the last few months. And don’t pass over that like a small thing. You know, I don’t know who said it, if it was one of my kids, but I said the word meditation today, and they said, meditation, isn’t that bad? Isn’t that bad? Oh, it was Darcy. Okay, he was pointing to Darcy. Because we think about meditation, and we think about that Zen, super weird thing, right? And you’re sitting with your legs crossed, and there’s the incense going, and you’re in touch with spirits from the other world. No, it’s here, right here. And he means he’s cherishing it all the time. He’s cherishing it all the time. So, the Word of God isn’t just, it is, a big old buffet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Man, it’s something in your mouth. It’s something in your mind all the time. Choosing bits and pieces of Scripture or truths to take with you through your day is so good. It’s so good. One writer, Joel Beeky, talks about that. You’ve got five minutes to sit while you’re at the doctor’s office. What are you doing while you’re sitting there? You just ponder. Ponder on a truth you’ve been learning lately. Ponder on a Scripture. Ask the Lord to help you understand and obey that text even more. Love to meditate on God’s Word.

But it ends here, then, with a plain and clear warning. The psalmist says, the wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Chaff’s like husk on the wheat or the grain or like a husk on corn or something. And so if you’ve ever, like it’s summertime and corn’s finally back in the produce section and you’re so excited and you have all your friends over, you know, to cook out and man, you’re going to make that corn and it’s going to be great and you roast it, but the fire got a little too high and what did it do? It hit the husk. And what did the husk do? It caught on fire. It caught on flames. It was a big fire on that husk. Why did that happen to that chaff, to that husk? Because it was dry. It was dry. It was dry. It was dry. It didn’t have the nutrients. It didn’t have the life that the actual vegetation had. What is that husk good for?

Nothing. The farmer would flick the wheat in the air and it would separate the wheat from the chaff and he would bundle up that chaff and he would burn it. That’s all it was good for. So friends, again, the wicked draw from a lifetime of godless sources and so in the end, they’re only useful for destruction. It’s a heavy word. It’s a really heavy word, actually. They are useful only for destruction by the influences they allowed in their lives.

But verse 6 says, the Lord knows. The Lord knows the way of the righteous. He knows the way of the righteous. The Lord knows those who have chosen His Son to be a constant and only source. The Lord knows those who have guarded their heart from what’s evil, who haven’t, you know, just aimlessly wondered or just carelessly, opened up their minds and their heart to any and every influence. No, He knows the ones who’ve committed themselves to drinking and feasting upon Christ His Son. And these are the ones who are full of life. And not just life. Eternal life. So these are the ones that are kept for eternity to bear their fruit and to find eternal life in the Lord Jesus. Let’s renew our love for the author that we would drink deep and drink often of this eternal fountain. Let’s pray.

Father, knowing You is a treasure beyond words.

Knowing Your words is a treasure we could never price out. We could, Lord, I imagine, never even in eternity feel the weight of. What it means to know You, to be loved by You, and to be taught, to be taught who You are.

To be shown the deeper and deeper mysteries in Christ.

To be sanctified and made holy in Christ Jesus. Lord, for undeserving sinners You have given such things. Lord, let us hold the treasure close to our chest. Lord, let us guard it. Lord, from every passing whim and wolves.

Lord, that in the end our life would be the Lord Jesus.

Preacher: Chad Cronin