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What's up, gentlemen? How's everybody today? Great crowd today. Good to see you guys. It's always fun. And somebody told me because I've been out two weeks, I needed to reintroduce myself. So my name is Greg Addison. And I'm the guy that keeps First Baptists from having a real pastor. So nice to see you guys today. I don't know. Depends. What do you need? I'll tell you. My name is Matt Passmore. Let me introduce myself to you. Yeah, then my name is Dave Scarupa. I'm glad to meet you today. Let's uh let's pray. Lord, thank you for today. Chance to be together, fellowship, eat together, laugh, enjoy being together with the fellas. We just thank you for that fellowship we have. And as just as we read the last few weeks through the relationship between Jonathan and David, it reminds us how great it is to have brothers in Christ and uh and friends to do life with. So thank you for the fellowship you give us today and each of these Tuesdays. I pray you'll use the food that we've eaten to the strength of nourishment of our bodies. We thank you for our folks that make it for us every Tuesday. They're just so wonderful to serve us and we ask your blessings on them as well. We ask you now that you be our teacher from your word. I pray that what we do will be encouraging to the guys and uh and really draw them closer to you as we study your word. We thank you most of all for the gift of salvation that comes through Jesus. In his name we pray, and everybody said. All right, as we read chronologically, uh, which is really fun. We're doing that as a church, and I know a lot of you guys are doing that with us. Um it's been interesting as you're reading through the life of David and all that, and they start to insert these psalms in the middle of the narrative and story of David. And Sunday we preached on a psalm, and it was really fun to do that. And our Chaffee Campus Maverick Herrera, our worship pastor there, uh, brought in one of the psalms that we had read as a part of the worship time, and it was great. And so as I was reading through this week and doing my readings, um just another great couple of psalms, uh, and I actually uh read these this morning, so this is really fresh for me uh but exciting. Um these are great right here. And as I read through this, it struck me that this is really something that applies to us and we can recognize in our lives. Taking for granted our salvation, often the scripture talks about this idea, and we've seen this illustrated as we've read chronologically through the children of Israel. They forgot the Lord. They forgot the goodness of the Lord, they forgot the promises of the Lord. And that's when they get off track. And so uh these two Psalms put together really are an incredible encouragement and equipping for us in that idea of my salvation. Am I considering that? Am I living in light of my salvation and what it means in my identity in Christ and the work that God's done? Or am I going through life and it's okay or things are good or whatever? And we take for granted the reality and the beauty of our salvation. Now, if you look at these scriptures, this is the last verse in the second Psalm. So I'm gonna use that as my teaching hook today. And I want you to think about that in a moment as we read from Psalm 106. Here's what that scripture verse says. And I've actually started memorizing it today, and this is gonna be my memory verse this week. Uh, so I can't do it yet, but I'm working on it. Next week I'll say, I'll recite it to you. Let whoever is wise, that's you guys back there, right? Let whoever is wise pay attention to these things and consider the Lord's acts of faithful love. And both of these psalms or songs are similar in that you go through the pattern of God bless his children, and they flourished, and then they walked away from the Lord, and they messed up, and he had to judge them, and then he forgave them, and they cried out to him, he forgave them, and they came back, and there's the pattern. And so at the end of this one, reciting that pattern, it gives this incredible verse. Let whoever is wise pay attention to these things and consider the Lord's acts of faithful love. Now, we'll just start Psalm 106, you have it on your sheet, and you can see the pattern of how this happens. Hallelujah. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. His faithful love endures forever. Who can declare the Lord's mighty acts or proclaim all of the praise to him? How happy are those who uphold justice, who practice righteousness at all times. Remember, I actually this is 107. She gave me the wrong passage. Um is it no, that's right. We're we're good. Verse 3 How happy are those who uphold justice, who practice righteousness in all times. Remember me, Lord, when you show favor to your people, come to me with your salvation, so that I may enjoy the prosperity of your chosen ones, rejoice in the joy of your nation, and boast about your heritage. So you see how expansive he is in his praise. God has done all of this for us. He's describing these incredible acts, how wonderful all this is. And then you get to verse 6. Both we and our ancestors have sinned, we have done wrong, and have acted wickedly. Our ancestors in Egypt. Now he's going back to history and he's prepping them as they were in Egypt, and then they were going to be drawn out of Egypt as God redeemed them from slavery in Egypt. And so that's where he's going to start talking. And he says, Our ancestors in Egypt did not grasp the significance of your wondrous works or remember your many acts of faithful love. Instead, they were belled by the sea, the Red Sea. It tells us multiple times this pattern. Verse 7, we just read, they did not remember the many acts of your love. In verse 13, as you read this pattern, they sin, God judges, they cry out, he restores them because of his covenant with them, then they sin again. Why do they keep sinning? Verse 13, they soon forgot his works. In verse 21, as you go through this pattern, they forgot their Savior. And so in our lives, it is easy for us to go on about life, get distracted in what we're doing. It's especially easy in times of blessing. You know, man, life is easy and things are going good. That's when we sort of get lazy, take for granted what God has given us, what he's done in our lives, that he gets credit for anything that's good in our lives, and we go on about what we're doing, and before we know it, we find ourselves in a mess again. That's the pattern of the Christian life. That's all of us have been there. Everybody, if we took an hour, we could go table to table, and everybody shared testimony when that happened in their life, right? That's just a part of what happens. And so, how do we counteract that? How do we stay out of the pattern of back and forth, back and forth? Um, Jesus said, I've come that you might have life lived on a roller coaster. It's not what it says, right? Jesus said, I've come that you might have life, you might have it more abundantly. Abundant life does not mean everything is going well, but what it does mean is we are living in light of all of God's love and faithfulness and wondrous works, and in tough times he's there for us. In good times we're giving him credit, we're basking in his blessing and joy, and we hit a tough time again, and instead of it being because we wandered away or forgot him, we are going into that with a sense of his gratefulness, and we look back at when he carried us through the last difficult time, and we're still living in light of his faithfulness and wondrous acts in the new thing because we got faith of how he carried us through the last thing. That's the abundant life in Christ. It's not the roller coaster of human experience that happens because we struggle with that. And here you have two psalms in a row that teach and go through that same pattern. And when you get to that, at the end of 107, again, you get our verse. Let whoever is wise pay attention to these things and consider the Lord's acts of faithful love. So let's talk about what that looks like. This is a very practical discussion of what our quiet time, what we refer to as our quiet time or our relationship time with the Lord. It's a very practical sense of our focus in life and how we are intentionally going about life and what we're doing. Instead of being driven by the tyranny of the urgent or being distracted by the things the Lord puts in front of us or whatever, we are to live wisely, and He defines what wise is. Now, here's the first thing I want you to see. Let whoever is wise, that opens the door for everybody. My dad used to tell me all the time, I've shared with you, uh, the advice from the great, sometimes it was the great theologian uh John Wayne, and sometimes it was the great theologian Red Fox, and it depending on who he was on his mind at that point, but he'd say this, son, life's hard, it's even harder if you're stupid. He's not referring to intelligence, he's referring to wisdom. You can't necessarily pick your DNA and decide you want to have an IQ of 147. You can't necessarily pick your IQ, but you sure can pick whether you're wise or not. You can learn, you can take God's word into your life, you can make the choice to pattern your living after what God teaches us to do. Wisdom is a choice. The Bible says in the book of Proverbs, which is a book to teach us godly wisdom, that the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom. You don't have to have an IQ of 147 and be a member of the Mensah Society to place your faith and trust in the Word of God. All of us can do that. Being wise is a choice. We can ingest the Word of God and allow it to change our focus, and we can be wise. And it's an invitation and it's also a prediction. Let whoever is wise. We can be whoever. But he also says, if you're wise, it results from this. If you're wise, it comes from this process. If you are wise, if you make that choice, the choice looks like this. It's to pay attention to these things and consider. And consider. Those are intentional acts. They take time, they take effort, they take quiet places. Sometimes it requires a journal and a pen. It takes being in God's word and letting it speak to us and then reflecting on it. Look at what he says. Break that down. Pretty simple here for us. Pay attention to these things. What things are we paying attention to? Well, he's just gone through two chapters. This one song, in and of itself, Psalm 107, he goes through this pattern. God blessed, we messed up, we walked away, we didn't trust. He judged us, we cried out, he forgave us because of his faithfulness, and because he has promised to do that with us, and we live for a while, and then we forget his works again, or we take for granted what's going on, we find ourselves in trouble, and then we find ourselves in a mess again. We find ourselves in the effects of sin, and then we find ourselves under the disciplining of our Heavenly Father who was trying to get us to repent and come back on track. We find ourselves in those things. When we are paying attention to them, what that means is we are paying attention to the patterns of life. When I get off track because I'm not paying attention, that's a problem. We're going to read soon the famous story of David and Bathsheba. And it begins this way: In the time when kings went to war, David stayed home. And then next thing you know, he's tempted. She's out bathing in the house and all that, and you get that whole thing. Our being careful is vitally important. We read this week about David moving the Ark of the Covenant from one place to another, and God's given clear instructions on how to do that. It has gold rings built on the side. You're supposed to have poles of this type. The Levites are the ones who move it. You slide the poles through, you got one guy on each end, they're carrying it this way. God warned them if you touch it, you're going to die. And David is not paying attention. Other people have died because of this journey. The Ark of the Covenant is where it is because they lost it in a battle to the Philistines. The Philistines captured it and took it back, and every town where they tried to keep it in Philistia, they broke out in all kinds of diseases. We talked about this a little bit a few weeks ago. And then they sent it back to Israel. Israel tried to do something with it, and they broke out with problems because they didn't pay attention to the way to do it. David is all excited about what God is doing, and so what does he do? He puts it on a cart. The horses stumble, the cart wobbles, is about to fall out, some well-meaning dude reaches up trying to protect it, and he dies because he touched the Ark of the Covenant. We're paying attention to how things happen. David should have had enough sense to go, like, let's see, how are we going to move that thing? Because the last time we did it didn't go well. And the Philistines didn't go well. And before that, it didn't go well. Oh, yeah. I think I remember God said something about how we're supposed to do this. Call the priest and go figure out how to do it. We pay attention to these things. The last time in my life I wasn't having my quiet time and I messed up, don't do that again. Don't do that again. The last time that I faced a problem, I was in a good mode with my quiet time, and I remember God gave me a word that when I ended up in that, I had a word from God that allowed me to navigate that better. That works really well. I'm supposed to pay attention to what God has done. I'm supposed to pay attention to what this pattern is and how it works. I am to be thinking about those things, thoughtful about those things. I'm to be capturing that wisdom. Listen, everybody can mess up the first time. We all have plenty of times we mess up the first time. I had a guy tell me one time the most important prayer you can pray is say, Lord, make me a fast learner. That's right. Because we could all give testimony to lessons we had to learn three or four times over. Right? And we beat that by paying attention. And where does wisdom come from? It comes from paying attention and beginning to build a catalog of faith of what God has done, about how he's carried me through this, about what he's taught me, about how this works, about how it went bad when I was off track, about how well it goes when I'm following him. And wisdom comes, biblical wisdom comes from paying attention to those lessons and incorporating those in our lives. And that's how that catalog of wisdom is built. Because what biblical mentoring is supposed to be is sharing with people the catalog of biblical wisdom where we tell young men, don't go around that corner, bro. You won't like what's around that corner. Stay on track because it's a whole lot better. Let me tell you about this time in my life, right? That's how that wisdom is accumulated. It's accumulated by paying attention to these things. You think about what these psalms are. The word psalm, as we talk about, means the word song, right? So this is a hymnal. It's a song book in the middle of Scripture. And so each of these is a song. And they all have like songs today, they all have different themes and different purposes, and you sing them at different times. And songs like this one are both worship and praise songs, but they are also teaching songs. They are teaching their children in church, if you will, as they sing these songs. This is our history. God has done this. God is faithful. When we mess up, there's judgment. But whom a father loves, he disciplines. And when we cry out and ask for forgiveness, God forgives and he blesses. When we stay on track, God's blesses. You read all this, give thanks to the Lord, for He's good. Well, Dad, I don't want to do that. Why do I have to do it that way? Because God is good. He didn't give you that rule to make you miserable or hide things from you or keep you having fun or anything else. Listen, son, God is good. He loves his children. And so his instructions to us, his plans for us, his involvement in our life is good. It's for our good. Let me tell you a story. Let's sing this song together that we learned in Sunday school about the faithfulness and the loving acts of God. He blesses us, he brought us out of Egypt, He did this. We forgot that God was good. We forgot his promises. Because of that, we went our own way. We did our own thing. We got conquered. It was a mess. People were crazy. And even in our sin, when we cried out to the Lord, He forgave us because He's faithful to His promise and He restored us and we were able to walk with Him again. Son, learn that lesson. Let's sing this song again. You remember when that happened? You remember when that happened. And we are paying attention to the work of God in our lives. It's incredible. We should be listening and paying attention and accumulating that wisdom that we're growing in our lives. And then he says this: consider, consider. My dad used to teach me all kinds of leadership lessons. He was an executive and a leader, and he was a great leader. And he'd say, son, when you're driving a car, you got to look out the windshield front and you got to look out your rear window and your rear view mirrors in the back. Situational awareness is knowing where you are, where you've been, and where you're going. And son, you have to know where you've been, but you can't drive a car looking backwards. You got to look forward, but then you got to pay attention about what you're passing and what's going on behind. And he says, we are paying attention, that's the rearview mirror, to all that God has done for us and to who God is and how he's proven his character to us. And then as we move forward, we are considering. And he says, consider. That's that idea that I should be thinking about these things. I know when I come up to a red light, people run red lights. I'm considering these moments. I've learned that in the past. I'm considering this red light, and I'm paying attention based on what I've learned in the past. Right? I mean, I grew up driving in Memphis. Like you talk about situational awareness. It's scary driving in Memphis. I was home last week visiting mom and doing love worth finding meeting and stuff. Dude, I'm telling you, they drive so fast in Memphis now, they teach you don't ever change lanes on the interstate in the Memphis area. Now we all know driving I-40, you stay in the right lane unless you're going 90 miles an hour, and then you get in the left lane. That's for the fast people, right lane's for the slow people, unless you're a truck. You all go 10 miles under the speed limit next to each other so nobody can get past you, right? But if you're in a normal vehicle, you go fast in the left lane, and so if you're in the left lane and people are coming up behind you, you get in the right lane, get out of there to go. In Memphis, you don't ever change lanes because they're going 95 miles an hour in town in the middle of traffic, and if you change lanes, you got no time to react, and they don't have time to react because they're coming back up on you so fast. I mean, I'm telling you, and you'll be sitting there in the lane, you're thinking, I'm in the left lane because I just merged. If y'all merge off I-40 onto I-240 downtown, right past St. Jude's and the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid and all that, you merge on this way and you're in the left lane of the interstate. But don't you dare go climbing across those lanes because man, some dude's doing 100 miles an hour coming up on your backside and he's gonna kill you. I mean, you got to pay attention, right? I'm considering what's coming, and I'm paying attention to what's behind. And that's a beautiful picture here. I am considering what's ahead. I am considering this decision. I am considering today. I am looking at what's going to happen at work today, in family life today. I'm looking at these financial decisions. I'm I'm looking at whether I'm gonna eat that second. Piece of pie or not. I'm looking at whether I need to work out today or not, or whatever's going on in your life. I'm considering that. Now, how do we consider? The Bible tells us in the book of Proverbs, there is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is destruction. Alright, so what are we considering? We're not considering how we want to do this. We are considering, the Bible says, his acts of faithful love. So what I'm considering as I approach that red light is how God has protected me or directed me in the past. I am considering the wisdom of God. Man, I've got a tough decision and I don't want to make that decision and I don't want to have to deal with that. What I'm considering is how God guides me in those decisions. What I'm considering is when I make a choice of faith to be obedient to God's instruction, even if it's going to be difficult, I'm considering that every time I've done that in the past, God has shown up and been faithful. I'm considering the fact that I know God loves me, even though he's asked me to do this hard thing. I know that God loves me because Jesus died for me on the cross when he didn't have to. He conquered death and sin for me. Jesus shows up in my life. He gives me a blessed life that I don't deserve in any way, shape, or form. He loves me that much. So if he's asked me to do that, he's asking me out of love. And I need to love him in return. He it is, Jesus said, He it is who loves me, keeps my commandments. And I want to show him that I love him because of how much he loved me. And so I'm going to step in and obey in that moment and follow that direction, even if it's difficult, because I've considered the alternatives. And I've considered that God's love is so faithful to me, I would rather be in a tough situation following Jesus than I would take the easy way out. Because it ain't that easy when God's not there. Let whoever is wise, whoever makes the choice to be wise, let whoever is wise pay attention to these things God has done. And consider as I'm moving forward his faithful acts of love. Those acts of love are not random, they are a reflection of the character of who God is, of his faithfulness to us. And so we know he loves us. The other word I would get you to say, God acts. It is the axe of love. A-C-T-S. Acts. God moves, God works, God doesn't aband us. God directs, God provides, God paves the way. Lord, we love you. You are faithful beyond anything we could number one imagine or number two deserve. Most of us live in blessings we don't deserve. But just your grace, you love your children. Just as these songs sing, hallelujah, we give thanks to you because you're good. I thank you that you also teach us in practical ways how to experience your goodness, how to walk with you in relationship, how we grow to be wise. And so you give us a song like this that we can sing over and over, that we can learn from, that we can rehearse, that helps us do exactly what you've taught us to do. Pay attention to how you work and to your faithfulness and to how you discipline us when we're wrong and you bless us when we're walking with you, and how you never abandon us. That we can consider those acts, consider that character, the nature of who you are. And as we move forward, we have direction because our faith has been built as we pay attention. And our pursuit of you is ahead of us because we're considering things not with our own wisdom, but because of how faithful you are. Thank you for a great day together, a chance to fellowship with each other. Lord, we thank you most of all for the gift of salvation through Jesus. In his name, in his faithful name, in his loving name, we pray. Everybody said? Hey, great to see you guys.