[0:00] All right, well, good morning again, and we have our message notes in our bulletins if you'd like to follow along and take notes as you go. I was told last week that I didn't finish the final next step.
[0:14] For those of you who are really obsessive about your note-taking, don't worry. Ask me if I forget something or if I miss something, and I will let you know.
[0:25] Today I will try to do my best to include everything that we go through that are in your notes this morning. We are in the book of Psalms this morning looking at Psalm 1.
[0:37] I know we've done this before in the past, but Psalm 1, I believe, is a very important psalm. It is in the first book of Psalms.
[0:48] There are multiple books within Psalms, and Psalm 1 talks about being blessed. Now, who wants to be blessed of God? Now, you may say, well, that's a silly question. Well, you're here this morning, so I believe that that indicates your interest in being here this morning.
[1:06] And if you're listening online, I think that indicates that you want to be blessed of God because you are listening to today's message or following along on Facebook as you're following along live.
[1:20] We appreciate you being here with us this morning. The first step in God's blessing us is, to most people, rather obvious.
[1:31] There are others who might say, well, I don't really know what the first step is into being blessed. That's why I'm listening to today's message. And the first step, really, in being blessed by God is salvation.
[1:49] The first step to being blessed by God, other than, aside from the fact that God sends the rain upon the just and the unjust, the Bible says. Yes, God sends the changing seasons upon those who are wicked as well as upon those who are righteous.
[2:05] But to be blessed beyond the natural, to be blessed beyond the physical that we all experience just as being part of the human race, begins the moment we trust Christ as our Savior.
[2:20] In the Old Testament, for those who were reading or singing these songs, these psalms, things like that, in the Old Testament, the Bible says, was to be a follower of God.
[2:31] One that had placed their faith, placed their trust in Jehovah God, and those who were, whether they were Jews, and they were following the Jewish religion, the Jewish faith, or they were proselytes, and they were those who believed in Jehovah God and wanted to follow the God of Israel.
[2:52] And that was the first step in being under the umbrella of the blessings of God. And this really is the entire message of the Bible, being part of God's family.
[3:04] And it comes, it's through faith. We see all the way back into the book of Genesis, and being right with God began with faith. And all the way to the end of the book of Revelation, being right with God comes through faith.
[3:21] So it is that common thread, the blood of Christ is that common thread all throughout Scripture. So this morning, if you're wondering, how can I be blessed of God?
[3:32] It begins by placing our faith, our entire being, only by faith. And it's in the blood of Jesus Christ.
[3:44] There's no formula for blessing that doesn't involve faith. It all has to do with trusting Christ, not only for our salvation, but trusting God for our daily life.
[3:54] Because the Bible says we live from faith to faith. Everything that we do is based upon the faith that God is real, that Jesus is alive.
[4:05] He died on the cross in our place. He took care of our sins on the cross of Calvary. And every single day, we are totally and completely dependent upon Him for our entire life.
[4:18] So I believe Psalm 1 assumes that a person is already a follower of God, as the writer of Psalm talks about, blessed is the man. So as we're looking at Psalm 1, so what is our prescription for blessing?
[4:36] Let's take a look. And this morning, we'll begin by reading the entire first Psalm, only six verses long. But let's begin with verse number 1.
[4:48] The Bible says, Blessed is the man. Starts off, the entire book of Psalms starts off with the word blessed. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.
[5:08] But his delight, her delight, is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper.
[5:32] The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
[5:47] And he ends it up in verse 6. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
[5:59] As we begin looking into this prescription and what is the result of being blessed by God, we see, begins with the negative.
[6:10] And the first negative that we see, we see certain dangers to God's blessed individual, God's blessed man, as the psalmist used the masculine language.
[6:27] But this is true for everyone, men, women, boys, and girls who are followers of God. He said, blessed is the man. And then he lists some negatives.
[6:39] Verse number 1, blessed is the man who, first of all, walks not in the counsel of ungodly, nor stands in the paths of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.
[6:52] So what we see is a threefold danger to the individual that would love to be and wants to be blessed by God. There are three dangers that the psalmist lists in verse number 1.
[7:05] The first danger that we see is the danger of walking in the counsel of the ungodly. Those who are not followers of God.
[7:16] Those who don't have God in their mind. Those who want to do their own thing. Those who are, as the Bible says, are following the God of this world, the prince of the air.
[7:28] And that is Satan and his world system. His world system being without God. Where mankind is king.
[7:39] Where we are the master of our own destiny. That is Satan's dominion. That is where he rules and where he wants people to be.
[7:51] He wants people to be subservient to him, but living for themselves. And living for the here and now. Living for today. Living for the pleasures of today.
[8:02] Rather than doing what God says is right. And avoiding what God says is wrong. So first of all, he begins by giving the danger of living your life.
[8:14] Walking. Peripateo in the Greek. Where it just means, it's physically, it just means walking. But figuratively, it means living your lifestyle.
[8:27] And based upon the way the ungodly live. The way they walk through life. And so he says, the first danger is walking in the counsel of the ungodly.
[8:42] And those who are not followers of God are always ready to give their advice. Are they not? Well, you know, this is what you ought to do. You let someone know that someone has hurt you.
[8:52] And they're so quick to say, well, you know what? You need to get even. That's what you need to do. You know, you need to go ahead and sabotage something. Or you just need to get even with them.
[9:04] They're so quick to give their advice. Or they say, well, you know what? This is what, I think this is what you need to do. And, or, well, whatever feels right. Whatever you feel like doing.
[9:15] Well, that's okay. Those who are not followers of God are so quick to give their opinion. Now, those who are followers of God are quick to give our opinion too. But we need to make sure it's based on Holy Scripture.
[9:27] And so the ungodly are quick to give their advice. This also may be in the form of literature. What magazines are you reading? What, it might be in the form of advertising.
[9:42] It might be in the form of entertainment. You know, are you watching, oh, what are some of these shows that, where they bring on these guests and they air all their dirty laundry.
[9:52] And they, you know, they have even sometimes fistfights on the stage. Or we have Dr. Phil and you have others. And Oprah, Oprah, whatever. And they give all of this advice.
[10:06] Well, is it godly advice? And that's what the psalmist says is a danger. Be careful who you're listening to. Be careful whose counsel that you are allowing to affect your life.
[10:18] Be careful. And make sure that it is based in Scripture. Make sure that it aligns with the Word of God. And that it is godly counsel rather than the counsel of the ungodly.
[10:34] The counsel of those who are without God. And that's really what the word ungodly means. The absence of God. And so, be careful.
[10:45] It may be in these forms. The second danger that he gives is standing in the way of sinners. So, he said, don't heed their counsel as you go through life.
[10:57] Then he says, standing in the way of sinners is also the second danger. First you listen. Then you live. So, he says, be careful about standing in the way of sinners.
[11:11] You ever heard the old adage, as a twig is bent, so grows the tree. And just as you take a young twig, and I remember Catherine wanted a weeping willow tree.
[11:25] Those of you who have been to our house knows that we have a large weeping willow tree. And it is a pain to cut grass under. I hate that thing. Don't tell her I said that.
[11:37] So, I gave it a haircut a few weeks ago. I trimmed the bottom of it. But you know what? It already grew back. It grows so quickly. But when we first got it, the kids gave it to us.
[11:49] I gave it to her, I believe. Yeah. One of y'all gave it to them, to her. And it was growing crooked. I mean, like really crooked. And so, what I did was I put a stake and I straightened it out.
[12:03] And I put a little piece of hose or something around it and tied on the other side and put a stake in the ground. And I straightened it out. And guess what? That tree is as straight as an arrow today.
[12:17] And it is. It's got a huge trunk. And so, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. And as we think about our own lives. As we listen to the counsel begins by our hearing and our listening.
[12:32] And before long, we begin living our life based upon what we've been listening to and what we've been hearing. And so, the second danger is not only listening to it, but in the way then that we begin to live.
[12:49] Thirdly, he says the third danger is sitting in the seat of the scornful. Do you see the progression? Walking.
[12:59] Walking. Standing. And then you get comfortable. And then you sit.
[13:12] And that's where you reside. And so, that's what the psalmist is saying where we need to be careful. Be careful what we listen to. Be careful the counsel of what we're hearing. And we're allowing to determine what we believe.
[13:27] And then what we believe determines how we live. And then how we live before long becomes the way that we die. And so, we have to be careful.
[13:38] First, listened. Then adopted the standards. And then now begins, we're going to see, in the seat of the who?
[13:50] Come on, talk to me this morning. The scornful. So, first of all, he started listening to the counsel or the advice of the ungodly. Then he started standing and being more comfortable with the advice of the ungodly.
[14:05] Now, what the psalmist is saying, now he's making fun of God's standards. He's making light of God's standards. Oh, well, that must not be right because that doesn't feel right.
[14:18] Or it's too difficult. And who could expect to live like that, right? That's where we become or that's where we get to. If we listen to the counsel of the ungodly, we begin to incorporate it into our life.
[14:33] And then that's the life we begin to live. And before long, we're saying, well, no, that doesn't make sense. And we make fun or we make light. And we would say, you know what?
[14:43] I would never make fun of God's standards. But what are we doing when we don't live according to God's standards? We're making light of them. We're saying it's not important. It's not weighty enough for me to live by that standard, to be holy, to be pure, and to hold pure.
[15:01] All those things that God says is pure. And so he said, you want to be blessed by God? Don't listen to the advice of the world. You want to be blessed by God?
[15:12] Don't put it into practice. And you want to be blessed by God? Certainly don't make light of God's standards and what God says. So we must understand, where does the road of the scornful go?
[15:30] It always goes downward. It always goes downhill. You see people that begin to adopt standards or begin to adopt beliefs that are without God. And you look at them years down the road.
[15:44] And you go, what in the world? And you know, you see the miles on their face. And you see the pain.
[15:56] And you see what poor decisions, you see the consequences of poor decision on their face and in their bodies and in their health very, very often.
[16:10] You know, you look at someone and you're thinking, oh, my word, they look, you know, they look old. And then you think, oh, well, they're just in their 30s or 40s. Well, maybe they were hard miles.
[16:22] Maybe they just made poor decisions and they're living the consequences of those decisions. The road of the scornful, the road of the ungodly always leads downward.
[16:32] So watch out for these dangers. And that's where the psalmist begins. Proverbs is a book of wisdom. But you know what Psalms has in it as well? Psalms has wisdom in it as well.
[16:45] And this is how the book of Psalms begins with how do we, how are we blessed? Well, this is how we are. Number one, watch out for these dangers.
[16:56] So that's where we begin. Watch out for these dangers, the threefold dangers. Walking, standing, sitting. Secondly, what we see in verse number two, he goes on from the negative.
[17:09] So he leaves the negative. He leaves the dangers. And he goes to verse two. And what we see there is the delight of the blessed man, the delight of God's blessed woman, the delight of God's blessed boy or God's blessed girl.
[17:25] You want to be blessed by God? Well, we've got to figure out what makes your heart skip a beat. We've got to decide if you want to be blessed, what floats your boat?
[17:37] What gets you excited? What do you love? What do you enjoy? And so we see, first of all, verse number two, but his delight. Whose delight? The blessed man.
[17:50] So the blessed person, the person who's blessed by God, finds his joy or her joy somewhere. Well, think about it. And this is a prescription, but I believe this is also a litmus test.
[18:07] This is also a quiz, so to speak. And so we're all taking a quiz this morning. You go, wait a minute. I thought school was during the week.
[18:20] And Sunday, well, you just went through Sunday school. And so now we're in the worship time. But we're going to have a quiz anyway. The quiz is, does this represent me?
[18:32] Do I find my joy in these things that the blessed man finds his joy in? And so if you say, well, you know what? That's not that much fun.
[18:43] Or, well, you know, I really don't enjoy that. Then it's kind of a no-brainer that maybe that's why you're not blessed as you would like to be. Maybe that's why you're not experiencing the blessings of God as you would envision.
[18:59] So let's take a look at what the blessed man delights in. First of all, his delight is in the law of the Lord. And you say, well, we're not legalists.
[19:13] Well, the law of the Lord encompassed more than just the thou shalt nots. It encompassed the entire teaching of God.
[19:24] And in the Old Testament, this was all they had at this time. So they had the laws of God. God had all kinds of laws. And some of them were rescinded in the New Testament because Jesus fulfilled the law.
[19:37] We no longer have to follow the dietary laws of the Old Testament. We no longer as, for sure, as Gentiles who've been engrafted into the nation of Israel, do not have to, we're not required to follow all the feast days of Israel.
[19:54] So that portion of the law we don't have to keep. But they're still important and they're still there and they still teach us so many things.
[20:04] But the person who is blessed by God finds their delight in the law of the Lord.
[20:15] So we see that in verse number two. His delight is in the law of the Lord. So he's learned to do what? Or she has learned to make God's word his delight.
[20:31] So the blessed person finds joy in reading and studying and meditating on the word of God.
[20:42] And you say, well, the Bible's boring. Well, you haven't read the Bible if you think it's boring. Yes, there are some portions of the Bible. The genealogies, that can get rather tedious.
[20:59] We just went through or we're going through Joshua on Sunday evenings. And the latter portion of Joshua talks about all the portions of the land and all those names of towns that you can't even pronounce.
[21:13] Yeah, those get a little bit tedious. But, I mean, the Bible has intrigue. The Bible has battle scenes. The Bible has all kinds of stuff that really make it interesting.
[21:30] But also the Bible is a current book that is even more current than, we used to say, than the newspaper.
[21:40] But even now we have online news. And some of you get, I know, get KPLC's updates. And so your phones will go ding and you'll find the latest news.
[21:53] But you know what? The Bible is even more current than that. Even more current than that. Because, you know, you'll find out something and then they'll update the news maybe an hour later when they find out.
[22:07] Well, you know what? God knew at the moment it happened. God knew it before it happened. And so the Bible is even more current than the moment's news. So to some it's boring, but to the blessed man it's blessed.
[22:22] To some it's dull, but to the person blessed by God it's delightful. To some it's fantasy, but to the blessed person it's food. To some it's information, but to the blessed person it's inspiration.
[22:37] So how do we read the Bible? I guess we can think about that. Do we read the Bible for information? Or do we read the Bible for inspiration? What do we gain from God's Word?
[22:48] I find myself sometimes going through my daily reading plan and reading it to check off a box. And if I'm not careful, that's what my time in God's Word can devolve into.
[23:02] Just reading it to check off a box. I did my daily reading today, so I'll be done with my Bible in the year by December 31st. So, concertedly, we have to spend time with God and find our enjoyment in God's Word.
[23:23] But not many will make God's Word their delight. You can always tell someone who is flourishing and thriving in their life with God, because it's always about God, it's always about Him, it's always time that we're spending in His Word.
[23:40] If not, it won't necessarily be an hour or two a day. Maybe if you're preparing for a Sunday school class or if you're preparing to preach, that might be a little different.
[23:51] But it might be a little snippet here, a verse here and a verse there. It might be 15 minutes that you spend in God's Word and praying back to Him what you just read.
[24:02] But the blessed person will make God's Word their delight, and it will become their delight. Have you ever heard of something called an acquired taste?
[24:15] To the believer, God's Word comes naturally, but the more time we spend in it, the more time we enjoy in it. And so we acquire a greater and greater love and a greater and greater appreciation as we spend time in the Word of God.
[24:32] So, you want to be blessed? Find your delight in God's Word. Secondly, you want to be blessed? Well, this is not fun sometimes, but you've got to move against the tide. You've got to swim upstream in order to be blessed by God.
[24:47] Well, what do you mean by that? Well, he says his delight is in the law of the Lord. And what about those people around you that don't delight in God's Word?
[25:00] Well, we need to be careful that sometimes we will be going against the flow. And we must decide to be in the minority.
[25:12] We find that we don't always, we're not always able to be where God wants us to be unless we are where he wants us to be.
[25:28] We need to be in his Word. We need to be doing what his Word says, even when the people around us are saying, well, that's foolish. That doesn't make sense. That's not, you're not going to make any money doing that.
[25:43] Or you're not going to whatever. And so we have to go against the flow. And sometimes, to do what's right means we're going to be in the minority.
[25:55] It says, verse number 16 of Psalm 119, 16, I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word.
[26:09] Verse 47 of Psalm 119 says, And I will delight myself in your commandments, which I love. Verse 77, Psalm 119, Let your tender mercies come to me that I may live, for your law is my delight.
[26:31] So we see a recurring theme. The person blessed by God delights in hearing from God. Do you love someone? I think most of us here do. If and when, when you hear from someone that you love, for those of you who are parents, grandparents, when that little one calls your name, you're going, oh, don't call me that.
[27:01] No, it delights you. And what do parents dream of after they have that child? The first day they will do what? Yes, they will do some other things.
[27:11] But the one thing that every parent, sometimes parents feud over it. No, they didn't say that. They said this. What are they, what are they dreaming of?
[27:22] Hearing what? Mom or dad? Some kids say mom first. Some kids say dad first. What does it do for you when you hear that?
[27:37] Come on. Oh, just your heart wells up and it's like, oh, yes, it's so exciting. Because we love hearing from the people that we love. And so the person blessed of God delights in hearing from God.
[27:52] Let your tender mercies come to me that I may live. I will delight myself in your commandments, which I love. I will delight myself in your statutes.
[28:02] I will not forget your word. So you want to be blessed by God? Enjoy. And treasure. And delight in hearing from him.
[28:15] And how do we hear from God? We hear from him in this age through his word. God speaks to us through his word.
[28:25] So when we hear from God, when we read God's word, what you're doing is you're hearing from him. So delight yourself in that. Delight yourself about hearing from the person that you love.
[28:40] And then, thirdly, what is the destiny of God's blessed man? We see that in verse number three.
[28:53] So verse number one, we saw the dangers, a threefold danger of listening to the counsel of the ungodly, standing in the way of sinners, sitting in the seat of the scornful.
[29:08] And then in verse number two, what does the blessed person delight in? Then we see what is the destiny of the person blessed by God.
[29:18] Verse number three, they'll be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. Very, very picturesque language. That brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither.
[29:33] And whatever he or she does will prosper. So what's the first thing we see? You're blessed by God. You've trusted Christ as your personal Savior.
[29:44] You've trusted Christ as your Savior. That is a prerequisite of being blessed by God beyond the physical that everyone is blessed with, is to trust Christ as your Savior.
[29:55] Follow Jesus. Be a follower of God. But also, don't fall prey to this threefold danger. Delight yourself in hearing from God, spending time with Him.
[30:08] And then, once we are in that way of blessing, the person blessed by God will be like a well-watered tree.
[30:21] Like a well-watered tree. You know, what a beautiful illustration of the tree reaching down its roots into the stream. This morning in Sunday school, we were talking about or complaining about having to cut grass.
[30:35] You know, it's been dry for the last two weeks and our grass is growing faster than it was, it seemed like, when it was raining. Well, you know what? There's probably, I know, there's still water there under the ground.
[30:46] And what has the grass done? The grass has reached down its roots and tapped into that water supply. The same thing that we see here with the person blessed of God.
[30:57] The picture is the tree that is sending out its roots. And there is a river close by. There is an abundance of water.
[31:10] And so, we're blessed by God. We will be like a well-watered tree. The river here in verse number three, I believe, can represent the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the water of life.
[31:29] So, this person blessed by God is going to be like a well-watered tree. Well, what is this tree going to be like? This tree is fruitful. He says in verse number three, that brings forth its fruit in its season.
[31:47] What is the fruit of the blessed person? Well, let's take a look at Galatians 5, 22 and 23.
[31:57] But the fruit of the Spirit, if we know Jesus Christ as our Savior, if we are a follower of Christ, if we have been born again, if we have been redeemed, transformed, and we have been baptized into the body of Christ, the Bible says, we have the Holy Spirit.
[32:15] And the Holy Spirit produces within us love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
[32:27] Against such, there's no law. So, the person blessed by God is going to be fruitful and is going to be producing, or is going to have produced within them, love.
[32:41] We talked about love last week. We were in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, the love chapter. So, we saw very practically last week how love being produced within the Christian affects relationships around us.
[32:58] So, the well-watered individual who is sending down their roots into the Word of God, into their relationship with Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit is going to be producing the fruit of love and joy.
[33:18] Now, do we lack joy? The problem is, where is our attention? So, joy, peace. We live in an anxious world.
[33:29] Do we not? We live in a world that's fraught with wars, fraught with all types of, not only physical disasters.
[33:42] We have Hurricane Dorian that's still doing its thing. And, I know most of you have probably seen and read the reports of what it has done in the Bahamas and in other areas as in the swath of the storm.
[33:57] We have current news. The president is not going to meet with the leaders of the Taliban because of their killing this American at the embassy there.
[34:13] We also live daily with a threat of violence, terrorism, you name it.
[34:25] So, we live in an angst-filled world, but what does the Holy Spirit produce within the person who's blessed by God and who finds their joy in God's Word and in Jesus Christ?
[34:37] Peace. An inner peace that is produced by God's Holy Spirit that the Bible says passes all understanding. And so, we can live a peaceful life, not necessarily, we're not going to always be at peace with everyone, but we can have inner peace knowing that God is in control.
[34:56] He'll take care of it. Also, long-suffering. We saw that last week in 1 Corinthians 13. We put up with a lot of things. We bear with a lot in the lives of those that we love.
[35:12] Kindness. Just, the world is awfully lacking in just good old-fashioned kindness. in so many ways.
[35:23] Especially when you leave the Bible belt, but still in so many ways, there are things that we do that are just kind. And it's sorely lacking very, very often.
[35:36] So, what is going to be produced is kindness, goodness, just intrinsic goodness. There are some people that you look at and you notice the way they live and you say, you know what?
[35:51] That person's just rotten to the core. They're just, I mean, they may look like, they may look okay on the outside, but they're just rotten at the core. Ever done that?
[36:01] Bitten into a piece of fruit that looked good on the outside and it was nasty because it was rotten at its core? Oh, it's horrible. And, and the Bible says when we're blessed by God and when the Holy, when this tree, well-watered tree is producing its fruit, Holy Spirit is producing the fruit of the Spirit, there's going to be intrinsic goodness within us.
[36:24] We're just going to be good people. I mean, that might sound corny, but the Holy Spirit produces good people. Faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
[36:39] Now this, we could, we could spend a whole hour on this area of self-control that the Holy Spirit produces within us. You know, there are a lot of things that we may want to do, like to do, but we control ourselves sometimes for our own sake, sometimes for the sakes of others.
[36:58] So these are things that the Holy Spirit produces within us. So, this tree is fruitful. Also, another thing that we see in Psalm 1 about the person who's blessed, his or her testimony will not wither.
[37:13] Verse number 3, whose leaf also shall not wither. What that means is we will always be producing fruit.
[37:24] The Holy Spirit will be producing that fruit within us and we won't be a flash-in-the-pan Christian. You've heard of those who start strong, they're on fire for a while and they flame out.
[37:39] If we are, or maybe their passion and their desire and their ardor for doing things for God, they just sometimes slowly ebb.
[37:52] And in our later Christian years, sometimes we're just going with the flow and we don't have that same excitement and enthusiasm that we once had for the things of God.
[38:04] So the person who is being blessed by God, who's finding their delight in God and in God's Word, they're not going to wither. They're still going to be just as fruitful on their dying day as they were when they first began following Jesus Christ and were blessed by God.
[38:22] Leaf will not wither. Also, the Bible says, the person blessed by him who delights in him, they will prosper in whatever he does. Verse number 3, and whatever he does will prosper.
[38:34] Romans 8, 28. Hope I'm not going too fast. Romans 8, 28. Whatever he does will prosper and we know that all things do what?
[38:47] Work together. For who? For good to whom? Okay, so we're talking about the blessed person.
[38:58] In whom does a blessed person delight? The Word of God. I think in the person of God. And so, all things work together for good to the person who loves God.
[39:17] So you want to be blessed by God? Love God. Love His Word. And all things will work together. And He will work all things together for you for good.
[39:27] You say, well, I'm going through a really horrible time. And what just happened to me hurts and is not fun. And what just someone just did to me or the market dropout or the whatever is not good.
[39:47] Well, the Bible says that for the blessed man, those who love God, God is going to work all those things out for your own good. It may not seem good.
[39:57] It may not feel good. It may not look good. But the promise that we have from God is all things will work out for good for those who love God to those who are called according to His purpose.
[40:15] And then we go on verse number four very quickly as we wind this down. The ungodly are what? In your Bibles. The ungodly are not so, but are like chaff which the wind drives away.
[40:28] Therefore, the ungodly shall 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 ungodly shall perish.
[40:41] So, you see the difference between the godly man and the ungodly individual? You see the difference between the person who follows God and the person who does not have God in their life.
[41:01] One will be blessed. One will be like a well-watered tree who's fruitful, whose testimony won't fade away. And also, one that will prosper in whatever they do.
[41:17] Everything will work out for their ultimate good, but verse five, verse four, the ungodly, they're not so. They're like, see the difference?
[41:27] The ungodly and refers to all of those above, especially verses one, verse one, and the danger of those who were told to not walk in, stand in, or sit in the way of, like the chaff.
[41:44] Farmers, after they would bring in their grain harvest, whether it was barley or wheat or whatever it was, they would allow it to dry. They would bring it to the threshing floor, sometimes through oxen, sometimes just walking on it.
[41:57] And they would typically be up on a hill, usually in the evening when they would do this, when the wind was, in that area, when the wind was blowing, they would take it, they would throw it up in the air, and the chaff would be separated from the wheat, the husk, the hull, the stuff that you don't eat.
[42:16] That would be blown away, and what would drop to the threshing floor would be the wheat or the head or the grain of wheat or barley. So like the chaff, it's with the grain until the wind blows, and then it's gone.
[42:30] The ungodly won't stand in the day of judgment because what does the Bible say that is going to happen at the great white throne judgment? Everyone who stands before God at that time will be sent to the lake of fire, meaning they will not be the ones who have trusted Christ as their Savior when they had the opportunity.
[42:52] So everyone who stands before God on that great day of judgment because you see, we who are followers of Christ, we've already been judged. We've been judged in Jesus Christ on Calvary.
[43:03] So we won't have to answer for our sin. That's been answered for in Jesus Christ. But the ungodly, they will come before God. They won't have an answer. They will all, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess, Jesus as Lord, and then after that, everyone will be sent to the lake of fire.
[43:21] So the ungodly will not be able to stand in the judgment. So our question this morning is, blessing or blight? Which will it be? Are we going to be a person blessed by God?
[43:35] Are we going to be careful of the dangers of who we listen to, how we live our life, which will ultimately depend on how our life ends and our condition when our life ends?
[43:50] and what do we love? What's our delight? Or in what? And in whom do we delight? And what's our destiny?
[44:02] I trust your destiny is the blessed of God. Let's pray. Father, this morning, as we have looked into your word, I thank you for your goodness. I thank you for your blessings.
[44:15] Father, I thank you for making it so clear as to how we are to be blessed. We thank you for loving us and for working all things out for our good.
[44:26] We thank you. We love you. And we trust that you will continue to bless your people. Father, we pray this in Jesus' name.
[44:38] Amen. Amen.