First Baptist Church of El Dorado - Sermons

Practicing the Presence of God: How Delighting In God’s Word Reshapes Your Life | Psalm 1

• FBC El Dorado • Season 2026

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We open a new series on practicing the presence of God by walking through Psalm 1, contrasting the rooted life of the righteous with the weightless drift of the wicked. We explore how delighting in Scripture, resisting compromise, and looking to Jesus form the gateway to true flourishing.

• blessedness as deep joy from living with God
• the slide from walking to standing to sitting in sin
• counsel versus worldview: where we take our cues
• delighting in Scripture and meditating day and night
• tree by streams: intentional planting and steady fruit
• chaff and judgment: what endures and what blows away
• Jesus as the righteous One and our sanctification
• practical steps to flee sin and build holy habits

If you're in our area and you don't have a church home, we would love to see you any Sunday morning at First Baptist El Dorado! Subscribe for more teaching through the Psalms, share this with a friend who needs encouragement, and leave a review to help others find the show. Which practice will you start today?


SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome to the FBC El Doredo Sermon Podcast. My name is Taylor Gare, and I have the privilege of being the pastor here at First Baptist. And I want to thank you for listening into our sermon this week. And I want to tell you this if you're in our area and you don't have a church home, we would love to see you any Sunday morning at First Baptist El Doredo. Would you join me now in listening to our sermon from this week? Amen. You can open with me this morning to Psalm 1. Psalm 1. We're beginning a new series all about practicing the presence of God. And so for the next few weeks, looking uh at the Psalms to uh teach us what it means to live and dwell in the presence of God uh day by day. I want to read Psalms one for us. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away, and 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. Pray with me. Lord Jesus, thank you for your word. Please teach us through your word what it means to practice the presence of God through our obedience, to live this blessed kind of life. Lord, transform us now, Lord, in Christ's name. Amen. The Gateway Arch in St. Louis uh finished its construction in 1947, really imagined by Luther Eli Smith beginning in 1933, this kind of unique and and beautiful structure. Uh again, finished in 1947, but commemorates America's expansion west. It is the gateway to the West. I don't know if you've ever uh been to that structure and even been up in the arch. You can go up in the arch. I will tell you this: if you've been up there once, you hadn't been twice. Um you have to get in this portal, this uh this, I don't even know what to call it. It it fits five people in this little cube. It doesn't fit five people in a backpack, just five people crammed in there, and then you go up this elevator, uh, very claustrophobic. Uh, you go up this elevator that kind of goes with the movement of the arch. You get to the top, and there's these skinny windows you can look out of. And if it is a windy day, you will feel the arch gently moving with the wind. I got a feeling I have not encouraged any of you to go do it. Uh if you ever get the chance, forget all I said and try it once. But the gateway arch really is a neat thing to behold and once again commemorates America's expansion to the West. Psalm 1 really is the gateway arch, the gateway of the Psalms. Now, that's easy to say, first of all, just because it's Psalm 1, you have to pass through it to get to the other 149, but not just because of its number, but because of its content. It is the gateway into the Psalms because it shows us what it means to live a life of obedience, what it looks like to live the obedient life, for which we need to understand from the start to really gain all that the Lord has for us in the remaining 149 Psalms. If you want to fully understand the Psalms, make sure you fully understand the gateway and you've passed through the gateway of Psalm 1. And Psalm 1 begins like this blessed is the man. Let's stop there. Blessed is the man, and obviously today when I say the man, I'm referring to uh man or woman, I'm referring to all of us in the room. Blessed is the man. Now, first that word blessed. What does it mean to be blessed? To live the blessed life. Our culture would give us plenty of ideas of what the blessed life looks like. From scripture, the psalmist wants us to realize that to live the blessed life really means living a life, that word blessed, we could call it happy. And now, let's be clear about something. A happiness in a much deeper way than maybe you and I talk about being happy. I'm happy when I eat a good meal, or happy when I got just what I wanted last week at Christmas. But it's a deeper happiness than that. It is the happiness, the the joy, the blessedness of knowing that I am living life with my Creator, with His Spirit dwelling in me, and I am living out His will for my life, and I am seeking and receiving the flourishing that He has for me because I'm living according to His word. That's what it means to be blessed. That is who the blessed person is. Blessed is the man, and here's what he doesn't do, here's what she doesn't do, who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. This is an important verse as we see it because we've got multiple words here. First, we've got uh the wicked, we've got the sinner, we've got the scoffer. And really what we're seeing is a rise in intensity. Now, maybe it's a little bit more difficult to see it if you're reading like I am, the ESV, that first word is wicked, and we think of that word wicked as a very evil term, and I mean it is, it's a it's not a good term, but but really what this word is, is is the unbeliever, the one who does not know the Lord. So they are someone who is lost and has no relationship with Yahweh. And so the blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the unbeliever, and so doesn't receive his counsel from those who don't know the Lord. Now, let me just provide a little caveat to that. What I'm not saying is that there is no wisdom in this world from people that don't know the Lord. No, no, they can offer us plenty of wisdom. If your cardiologist doesn't know the word, doesn't know the Lord, but he's the best cardiologist in America, go to him and do what he says and let him do what he needs to do for you. Share the gospel with him by all means. But but I'm not saying we can't gain this like an earthly wisdom in that sense. What it's talking about is taking counsel, uh, really, really uh dictating my worldview and the way I see this life and this world based on unbelievers. Letting them have a say in the spiritual things of my life. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners. So we've gone simply from the unbeliever, now we're standing in the way of sinners. A rising intensity, now uh the unbeliever that willfully, intentionally rebels against God in sin. Obviously, the the unbeliever does this, but but sinners take it even a step further, this willful, this intentional sinning, the standing in the way of the sinners, and then we go even further, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. So we've moved from simply an unbeliever to the willful, intentional rebel sinner, to now a step further to the scoffer that does all of the above, but also looks back and ridicules those who would follow the Lord. So do you see the rise in intensity? The unbeliever, the sinner, the scoffer. But you also see a rise in another way as we go along. You see this, who walks not in the council of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. Do you see that as we're rising in intensity, uh, we are also becoming a lot more comfortable because we're moving from walking to standing to sitting. I'm walking and rubbing shoulders with the counsel of the unbeliever. Now I'm standing, I have the time of day to stand with the sinner, and then it moves to a place I've grown very comfortable with sin. I'm seated with the scoffer. Do you see that the path of sinfulness, the path of wickedness, and the the uh non-believer in this picture, it's a slippery slope when we as believers uh start to associate at a deep level with those uh that don't honor the Lord with their mind, heart, soul, and spirit. It's a very slippery slope. Today you're walking with unbelievers. Tomorrow you may be standing with sinners, and the next day you're sitting with scoffers. Uh maybe the greatest art thief of all time, and that's not something you should brag about being the greatest at. A man named Stefan Breitweiser. Stefan Breitweiser, the greatest art thief of all time. He loved art and loved stealing art, and he never sold a piece of art that he stole. He loved having this art just for the art's sake. He just wanted to have it and he wanted to be able to look at it. Stefan Breitweiser lived in the attic apartment above his mother's home. And in that attic apartment, every square inch of that wall, in that attic apartment, now don't miss the B that I'm about to state, there was art worth somewhere between, they speculate, 1.5 to 2 billion dollars worth of art. Again, he's the greatest of all time. Stefan Breitweiser said that where did this all begin? How do you get to the point where you're sitting in your mom's attic apartment with maybe a couple billion dollars worth of art? He said this when he was a kid. He was at a museum and he was running his hand along this Roman casket. He shouldn't have been touching it from the start, but he was running his hand along this uh casket from ancient Rome, and as he was doing this, this little dime-sized metal piece just nicked off and fell to the floor, and he reached down and he he took it, and instead of you know letting someone at the museum know, instead of just trying to place it back, which is a hundred percent what I would have done, can I just get this back? He just put it in his pocket and took it home. And for the first time when he got home, he pulled that out, he realized that fine art was something that he could possess. He didn't wake up to be the greatest art thief of all time. He woke up and went to a museum and accidentally nicked a little piece off and took it home. You know, sin is a very slippery slope. We don't wake up hoping our lives get devoured by sin. We wake up and make a single compromise that leads to another single compromise to where we were just walking with the ungodly and now we're seated with the scoffers. We talked before, this is David's slippery slope trajectory. Just one single compromise. Let's stay home while kings are off at war, becomes a case of adultery, becomes a case of deception and lies, becomes a case of murder. This is the slippery slope of sin. And we see it so clearly here. So if we want to avoid verse one, if we want to be the blessed man or blessed woman that doesn't fall into the slippery slope trap of verse one, what do we do? Verse two. But his delight, her delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law he meditates day and night. So what do we do to avoid the trap of verse one? We delight in the law of God. What does it mean by the law of God? We could talk about the law, first, the Ten Commandments and the Law of the Old Testament. We could talk about what we call the Pentateuch, the law, the first five books of the Old Testament. Really, what I would say is this delighting in the law is delighting in the Word of God. That you have made it your delight, that you have acknowledged that it is the truth that changes you. That in this world where truth seems relative, that we do have a truth, that we do have facts that we can lean on and that we can learn from, that we can transform, or that can transform us. That this this word right here really investigates our own lives, looks at our own heart and seeks to change what needs to be changed, that we do have this word and we delight in the law of the Lord. And on this law, he meditates day and night. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean day and night, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that we have our Bibles open and we are in Bible study? If you have the time to do that, praise God, okay? If you have the time, I I you can gladly do that. I support that. What I truly believe it means is that God's word, we are uh very careful to study it and memorize it and learn it and to meditate on it in such a way that even when it's not with us, it's with us. That even when we're on the move throughout the day and and even laying our head on the pillow at night, God's word is not far from us. That's what it means to meditate on the word of God. I'll tell you the trap I fall into. The trap I fall into is getting in a Bible reading plan and thinking that my goal is to make sure I accomplish the Bible reading plan. Have you ever done that? That that I just get so caught up. Here I am. I'm okay. I'm going through the Bible in a year. That means by the end of today, I I've got to read this morning was Genesis 7 and 8, and then there's a psalm and a New Testament passage that I'm gonna get to later today. And and if I'm not careful, I will I will trick myself into thinking my goal for this day is to just make sure the words on the page are read before I go to sleep tonight. Certainly that's part of it. We build consistently, consistency, but if it's not more than that, then we're really just performing, aren't we? No, no. My goal should be, as I walk through the word of God with consistency, that I am taking time to meditate on his word so that it can actually transform me, transform my life in such a way that it changes me. That's what the man does who is the blessed man who delights in the law of God. And so, if you want uh to be saved from the trajectory of verse one, live out verse two. Delight in the law of the Lord. If you are not living in the Word of God, if you do not have consistency in the Word of God, I just beg of you, before today ends, change that. Just find some way, some plan. You don't have to be impressive, you don't have to go through the whole Bible in 90 days, uh six months, one year. You don't have to go through it in five years. But find a way you can be in the word consistently, day by day, even for a few moments at the time at a time, and meditate on that word. Verse 3, we continue. He is like the tree, the blessed one is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, its leaf does not wither, and all that he does, he prospers. So now we get a picture of what the blessed man looks like, what the blessed woman looks like. And I gotta tell you, that's a beautiful picture. Well, you next week we're talking about Psalm 23, a lot of the same ideas here. He leads me beside these green pastures and still waters. Right here we have the tree that is planted by streams of water. And this is fascinating to me because it's not the tree that just really lucked out, lucked out in the fact that this tree from the dawn of time happened to be near this body of water of which it could receive the nutrients it needs. No, no, it's not the tree that lucked out, it is the tree that is intentionally planted by the water. And so the Lord, the master gardener, uh, takes your life and intentionally plants you by the streams of water so that you can receive the nourishment that you need. You are planted intentionally by the good gardener above for everything that you need for life and godliness in Christ Jesus. This is who you are if you will be the blessed man who lives out verse one and lives out verse two. And because of that, you're receiving your nourishments because you've been planted by that water. You will now do what? You will yield fruit in season. As we think about the believer yielding fruit, we often think of uh Galatians 5.22, where Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit. As the Spirit is sanctifying and working within us, what comes out? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, self-control. We think about these fruits. And it's interesting talking about this fruit, certainly at a new year. Maybe some of us in the room have made New Year's resolutions. I hope you've kept them up to this point, but maybe you've thought through things you'd like to do different, or things you'd like to add to your life, or maybe subtract from your life, or goals you want to meet, and I'm convinced of this, is the reason why so many New Year's resolutions fail is we don't commit long enough to see the fruit of that New Year's resolution. That we stop before we see the fruit. One example, if my, let's say my goal is to uh to work out four days a week and make sure I, you know, eat at least one vegetable maybe every few months, if I could just do that. If that's my goal in the new year, and I get two weeks in and I say, hey, I'm not seeing much from this, and I quit because of that, how much greater could that have been if I had just waited six months and maybe seen the fruit of what it feels like to maybe eat a piece of broccoli every once in a while? And once you see that fruit, it really encourages encourages you to go on in that resolution and go on to meet that goal. But so often we fall short because we don't wait long enough to see the fruit of what we're after. I believe it can be true in the spiritual disciplines as well. But once you see the fruit of what God is up to in your life, once you see the fruit of what's been going on privately in the quiet place with the Lord, it might change everything for you. That that maybe uh you've been memorizing a passage of scripture and there'll come a day in a couple months that you're at the coffee shop with someone. And he or she has been struggling with something, and the Lord brings that verse to mind, and it just changes everything and encourages them in such a way, and you see the fruit of those quiet times and quiet places when you are just reminding yourself of that verse over and over again. Maybe you've been uh praying and you've been praying and and you've wanted to grow in your prayer life, and you know how hard it is to be a prayer warrior consistently, but you've been working at it and you've been praying to the Lord, and finally down the road, you see the Lord move in a mighty way and answer that prayer request in a very specific way, and you see the fruit of that, and it changes everything for you. That if we can be the kind of people that understand what it is to delight in the law of the Lord, understands what it is to flee sin, so that we can be the tree planted by streams of water in season, the Lord will bring fruit forward in your life. And there is nothing more exciting than to see the Spirit work in your life and this fruit come forward. At the end of verse 3, it says this in all that he does, he prospers. That's good news, isn't it? And not prospers in a worldly way. In all that he does, you know, everything comes out great and there's no hardship and there's no pain and there's health and wealth, and we all go home happy. Not that at all. You prosper in that the Lord will make you prosper because the Lord is causing you to flourish because you are understanding what it means to live life empowered by the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit coming out of you, and God's will is being done in and through you. Verse 4, the wicked are not so. This is not their experience. They are like the chaff that the wind drives away. If you are harvesting grain and you've gone to the threshing floor, you will take that crop, you will take the grain, you will throw it up in the air. This is what they would do, throw it up in the air, and the the chaff would blow away in the wind, and the good grain would fall back down to the ground. Again, you throw it up, the chaff blows away in the wind, the good grain falls back to the ground. That's how you eliminate the chaff. God says that's what the wicked are like. What comes of their plans? They're blown away. What comes from their agenda? It's blown away. What comes from the sin? What comes from all they accomplish through their wickedness and evildoing? It amounts to nothing. Verse 5, therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment. They have no standing. Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteousness. They're not counted among the children of God, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous. But the way of the wicked will perish. The Lord knows the way of the righteous. I was reading once again this morning in Genesis 7 and 8, and the account of Noah and the flood, and uh Noah's out at sea. The whole world is a sea at this point. And it says this interesting term. It says, and and God remembered Noah. And God remembered Noah. as if God was going about some of his other business and just he was suddenly reminded, oh, wait, I a buddy of mine is out at sea with every animal that's ever lived. God remembered Noah. That's not what he's getting at. When it says God remembered Noah, it says, God could never forget Noah. God knew right where his servant was and remembers all the good that he will bring in and through this situation as he brings him to dry land. The same thing here. We're not just talking about the Lord knows the way of the righteous, as in the Lord knows facts about your life, that the Lord just looks down and like a movie screen sees what you're up to. No, no, it's deeper than that. The Lord knows the way of the righteous. It is a relational idea. The Lord is deeply committed to you, knowing you in and out, and all along the way, you will get to know him well if you are living this blessed life. But look at the way of the wicked, it will perish. Remember, the chaff blows away in the end, it will perish. We really have two options. In the gateway to the Psalms, we have two options. Look at the bookends of this chapter. The first word is blessed, the last word is perish. There are two roads before us. One is the road of blessedness, the other is the road of perishing. Now, I'll ask you on this uh fourth day of January, which road do you want to go down? Which road do you want to live on in 2026? And by the way, for the rest of your earthly lives and by the way, eternal lives, which road are you on? The road that leads to blessedness, or the road that leads to perishing. How do I do this? How do I make sure I'm on this blessed road, the road of the righteous man that exists in Psalm chapter 1? How do I do this? Well, I want to say two things to us briefly this morning. As we try to be this blessed man, this righteous man, first and foremost, we look at the ultimate blessed and righteous one, Jesus Christ the righteous. How do I do it? We we look to Jesus. First of all, we understand that positional righteousness is already ours in Christ Jesus. That if you know Jesus Christ, meaning you have a relationship with him, you know he died for you, you know he forgives your sins, you know he's Lord of your life, positional righteousness is already yours. You are counted righteous before the Lord. And part two of that is this this Holy Spirit-led daily righteousness that we call sanctification, growing more and more into the image of Christ, growing more and more into becoming the blessed man of Psalm 1. That is what is before us in this new year. That is what is before us as the Holy Spirit works in us. How do we do this? Verse 1, we flee sin. In your own life, what needs to go? What needs to be cut off? Not tomorrow, but today. What do you know is there that doesn't need to be there? Then verse two, are you delighting in the law of the Lord, meditating on the word of the Lord? Are you that tree planted by streams of water? Do you have fellowship with the Lord? Do you make your spiritual growth a commitment in your life? Do you delight in his word? Do you communicate with him through prayer? Do you fellowship with him and other believers around him? If you want to be the blessed person, uh it is all there before you. And the Lord is waiting. And I believe this that everyone in this room knows the road they want to walk down in this coming year and in all the days ahead. Uh throughout this series, we'll be talking about practicing the presence of God. In Psalm 1, we see that the gateway is as simple as this it's it's just our obedience. That initial gateway to practicing the presence of God is our obedience. Our willingness and desire to follow our Savior, to do as He did, to make His Word the priority in our lives, to flee the things He called us to flee. This gateway is simply our obedience. Maybe you're here this morning, and for the first time you want to pass through the gateway into a relationship with the Lord. The same Jesus that died for many others in this room died for you. The righteous one we just spoke of seeks to give you his righteousness through the work of Christ Jesus on the cross dying for you. I'd love to talk to you about that today. Maybe you want to join our church family or talk to us about baptism. However, you want to respond this morning, I'll be down front. Will you pray with me as we prepare to respond? Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for this day. Thank you for the gift of Psalm 1 and uh for showing us what it means, Lord, to walk in obedience, to flee sin, and to pursue you. And then Lord, would you more and more make us into those trees planted by streams of water that we would yield our fruit in season? Would we prosper in our ways, Lord, because you make us prosper. Lord, would we take comfort in the fact that you know the way of the righteous? You know us deeply, Lord. And Lord, let us lean on that knowledge. The knowledge of you and the knowledge that you know us, Lord. What a gift. And if there is one this morning that needs to respond in any way, maybe just prayer over their lives, whatever it may be, would they do so now? In Christ's name. Amen. Would you stand now? I'll be down front as we sing if you'd like to talk.