Two Paths | Psalm 1

Andy Thoren- May 31st, 2026

This message launches the Psalms series by exploring Psalm 1 and its foundational question: What path are you on? Through the contrast between the righteous and the wicked, the message explains that every person is moving in a direction—either toward God or away from Him. It warns that spiritual drift often happens gradually through the influences we allow into our lives and challenges us to be intentional about what shapes our thoughts, values, and decisions. Rather than being influenced by the world, believers are called to delight in God’s Word, allowing it to guide and transform their lives.

This message also highlights the powerful imagery of a tree planted by streams of water, showing that a life rooted in God grows strong, fruitful, and resilient through every season. In contrast, a life disconnected from God is compared to chaff—unstable, directionless, and ultimately leading to destruction. The message encourages believers to continue growing deeper in their relationship with God and challenges those who have not yet trusted in Christ to consider the path they are on. Ultimately, it reminds us that the choices we make today shape the direction of our lives and that true flourishing is found in a life rooted in God.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And as Pastor Scott said, we're kicking off today a new message series called Now That's What I Call Music Psalms Psalms. And I was looking at that bumper as I was walking in and I was remembering a lot of those songs that I grew up listening to. And it it's it's amazing how those songs and the psalms that we've read in the Bible just really resonate with us. And I'm gonna talk about that today. Um but before we go into the different psalms that are there, I want to get you thinking about, well, Psalm 1 is what I'm gonna talk about today. And I think it's interesting why Psalm 1 is in the very beginning of all the Psalms. I think it's intentional why God put it there. Because when we think of the Psalms, we typically relate to songs like that, where they're filled with joy and sometimes grief and sorrow. And as you read the Psalms, the different Psalms in the Bible, there's just all these emotions, and it's very honest and raw at times. You see people and their interaction with God and how they're going to God with doubts and fear and suffering and praise and joy and things like that. It's like they pull back the curtain of their life, and we're able to see what's going on, and we relate to that because we go through those same things. It's it's that real human emotion and experience that I think really draws us in. And so the Psalms has things like songs, poems, laments, praises, right? It's God's people crying out to him in different ways. But I think there's something very fundamental with Psalm 1 being very uh, it's in the beginning, it asks us this fundamental question. It's almost like God saying to us, hey, before you you go deeper into all those things that I just mentioned, you need to take a step back and you need to consider an important question first. And that question is, what path are you on? What's the trajectory of your life? What direction are you headed in? Because the rest of Psalms probably won't matter too much if you don't get that question figured out first, if you don't get that figured out in your life. So let's jump into Psalms 1 here. I'm gonna read, it's really long, it's six verses. It won't take us long to get through it. Let's read through it and then we'll continue on. Blessed is the one who does not walk and step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither. Whether they whatever they do prospers, not so the wicked, they are like chaff and that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. And I don't know about you, but Psalm One has always stood out to me in terms of this vivid imagery that it gets you thinking about, right? Especially the tree there that's planted beside streams of water. And I want to call your attention to, like as I was going back into Psalm One and studying for this message and preparing, it just re-affirmed this idea of this vivid picture. And I think we have a slide of kind of what I visualized as Psalm 1, being presented with two paths that we can all go down. Are you are you in your life, are you headed down this path of righteousness, of moving closer to God, right? That this tree exemplifies is an example of, or are you moving in a direction that's taking you further away from God, that leads to just challenges and struggles and difficulties and problems, right? And so let's just jump into things. Let's jump into Psalm 1, verse 1, because Psalm 1 doesn't waste any time. It's like, hey, let's jump into this. First, let's get you thinking about the things that influence you in your life. Let's go back and read Psalm 1, verse 1 again really quickly here. Blessed is the one who does not walk and step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers. And I want to call your attention to the actions that are taking place in this verse. They're progressive. It starts by saying, hey, don't walk alongside sinners. So if you're walking along, maybe something catches your attention and you kind of glance at it, you look at it, but it you just continue on with what you were doing. But it catches your attention for a moment. And then it cautions us, verse one, about standing around with sinners, right? And the idea here is it's it's this progressive thing, right? You're walking and then suddenly you pause and you stand and you take a closer look because suddenly something's caught your attention. Until finally it's talking about sitting down in the company of mockers, right? All of these people, these examples of people are people that are living in an ungodly way, a sinful way. Their focus and their attentions are not on the things of God. It's very worldly. And it's talking about this influence that can pull us away. So by the time you've stopped walking, you've paused, you're looking at something, you're standing there until finally you sit down with this negative, ungodly influence in your life. You're like, you're you've kind of bought in, you're committed at this point. And so verse one is challenging us, saying, be cautious of that. It makes me think how many of you have been to the San Diego County Fair before? Probably many of you, right? I I don't know if you can relate to this idea. Uh it kind of stood out in my mind, but when you're you go there and you go to the exhibition halls, and there's a few of them, right? And you're walking up and down the rows, you're looking at all the vendors and the products that are being sold, I feel like it's a little bit of a similar experience where I'm walking down the aisle, I'm just kind of glancing left and right, looking at things, until something catches my attention, and I might pause there for a moment and take a closer look. Maybe someone's giving their sales pitch, they're doing a product demonstration, but it's only a momentary thing, and then I continue down walking down the aisle until, you know, I'm walking that whole day, and many of you, you get to the end of the day and you're really, really tired, right? Until you see the massage chairs or the booth where they have the foot massagers, right? You get to sit down there and you're totally you've bought in at that point. Maybe you you crossed that booth a few times before, you've walked by it, you stood there for a second, and now you're invested. You're sitting down there and you're enjoying that, right? It's this idea of this progression that happens, I think sometimes subtly, sometimes maybe even we don't even realize that it's happening, where we kind of gradually shift and move in a direction that's moving us away from God into ungodly ways, into sinful ways, ways that God doesn't want us to go. I don't think, I think it's more of a gradual thing. I think people don't generally wake up and say, hey, today I'm gonna do a hard right turn, I'm gonna jump off the rails, and I'm gonna do my own thing, I'm gonna reject God. Can that happen? Sure. But I think it's more of a subtle thing. It's a lot of small decisions and compromises made over time, maybe knowingly, maybe unknowingly. And I want you to be careful and cautious about that, that that doesn't happen in your life. So Psalm 1 doesn't stop there about what it's avoiding, what it's warning us to avoid, but it continues on with what it wants us to be influenced by. Instead of being influenced by that, what should we be influenced by? Because God wants to shape our hearts and our thoughts and our decisions. And so if we jump into verse two here, let's read it again really quickly. But they delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night. Okay? So the righteous, these blessed ones, the ones that are going down this path that's leading them closer to God, these are the things that they are doing. And I don't, this isn't something that God that we should be doing out of obligation, right? I think oftentimes we can find ourselves thinking that or doing that. Where it's like, ah, I, you know, I'm a Christian, I know I'm supposed to read my Bible, I know I'm supposed to do these things. And maybe we do it inconsistently, but we struggle with it because it's more of a obligation that we feel like that's just what we're supposed to do. I'm gonna touch more on that in just a second, but let's look at some other elements in this verse, right? The the law of the Lord, right? We're to delight in the law of the Lord. So this is this is God's word, holy scripture. This is the Bible. We're to delight in it. We're to meditate on it. And this isn't crossing our legs and sitting down somewhere and humming to ourselves and removing all thoughts from our mind. This is thinking and dwelling on the things of God and his thoughts that especially come from as we study his word, as we study the Bible. We're meditating on what we're reading. We're not reading just to check it off our list for that day to the point where I can't even remember what I read five minutes ago. No, this is really diving into it, learning and understanding God's truth when we don't understand it. We're digging into it, right? Meditating on those thoughts, thinking about it, and not only doing it periodically, but doing it multiple times each day, doing it on a consistent, regular basis. But I really want to touch on this word delight, because at least for me, in this verse, it stands out the most. We're we're to delight in God's word in the Bible. Delight's not necessarily a word that I think we use in our common vernacular. I mean, I don't find myself using that word a lot. And so let's talk about it a little bit. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines delight as a high degree of pleasure, satisfaction, or joy. If I were to add to that a little bit, I might say something that you're really passionate about. You're emotionally invested in. It brings a great sense of just contentment and joy and satisfaction into your life. Some examples might be on Christmas morning. You can probably remember this yourselves as a young child, or maybe you are a young child out there right now. But you think about Christmas and the lead up to it. Or you think about Christmas morning and waking up early and running out there and just the delight of that experience. Or maybe there's some grandparents out in the audience, and you can think about how you delight in your grandchildren and spending time with them. Where you would, you're happy to, if someone's willing to listen, you can talk forever about your grandchildren and everything that they're doing, and you enjoy spending time with them. You delight in that time that you get with them. Or maybe you're a Padre Race fan and you really delight when they're able to beat the Dodgers, right? That's just that's the best. You delight when that happens. I want you to think about what is it in your life that you delight in? In my life, I'll give you an example. I have a picture here that we'll throw up on the screen of my garage at home. And uh it's pretty clean right now. I'll I'll be the first to admit I'm a little OCD. I like clean, I like organization and things like that. It's not always that way. Sometimes you get busy with life, and it seems like at least my garage is where you throw everything. Um, and then eventually I have to clean it up. But when it looks like this, that brings a great sense of delight and joy and satisfaction in my life. I'm able to find tools when I'm looking for them. I have a workspace that I can actually use when I need to, right? That's a place where I delight in. And so I don't know about you, but I, as I'm studying this and reading this and preparing for this message, I was a little bit convicted by this idea of delighting in God's word. Because I already talked about it a little bit, but my experience has been, and in talking with other Christians, is that I don't think we always do that. I think sometimes it can be a challenge to open up God's word, to make that time, to make it a consistent thing. And then when we're we're doing it, have it not be a chore, but something that we're actually excited to do. For me, it's it's I've seen a progression over the course of my walk with God and as I've grown and matured as a Christian, it's learning God's truth that I learn about as I read and study scripture. And as I apply that to my life, I see just blessings and goodness and good things that come from that. Not to say that we're promised as Christians that life's gonna be good and perfect all the time, but God's ways work. They absolutely do. And he blesses us when we attempt to live our lives in a way that glorifies and honors him as we study his word and scripture and we live that out in our lives. I've seen just so many positive good things come from that, that has caused me to delight in it, and I seek it out and enjoy it when I do it. So if you're not there or you feel convicted like I did a little bit, I would say don't give up. We're we're called as Christians to desire and want that. Maybe you're not there right now. Maybe you're a little bit inconsistent, and that's okay, but strive to do better. Some things that I've seen work in the lives of others or have worked in my life is I love listening to the Bible in an audio format. I love dramatized versions of the Bible where they get great voice actors in there, and they'll even do sound effects where there'll be like a battle scene and you'll hear swords and shields clashing against each other and that type of thing. Or maybe consider the translation of the Bible that you're reading. Maybe it's a little bit challenging, or get a study Bible where there's footnotes in there that can help explain things to you that maybe you don't understand, or maybe it's getting plugged into a Bible study where you can have a community of people around you that encourage you to do that. And over time, you, like myself and others, can, although still imperfect, can learn to delight more in God's word. I would just encourage you to figure out what works for you, have that be your goal. Baby step at a time, right? It can seem insurmountable sometimes and difficult. Like, how do I get to that point? Take it one step at a time. What we delight in naturally occupies our thoughts. Psalm 1 says that someone's life is consistently shaped by God as they move closer to God and are connected to God. Not only should we delight in God's ways, but something begins to happen in our lives as we're more plugged into God, as we read his word more. We become like this tree that's uh described in Psalm 1, verse 3. Let's review that verse again really quickly. That person is like a tree, that the righteous blessed one is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever they do prospers. And here we get this amazing imagery of this tree that's thriving, it's flourishing, it's in a perfect place. It's got the water and the stream right next to it. I'm imagining its roots going deep down into the soil and finding all the nutrients that it needs. It's the sun comes out and instead of its leaves withering, it's able to withstand that, right? And this makes me think of, I know you probably, if you didn't think I was maybe a little bit strange with the super clean garage, you're probably gonna really start to think I'm strange at this point. But that verse, as I was preparing for it and to give it to you and present it to you, and thinking about, okay, what would be a good illustration? It made me think of guacamole dip. Guacamole dip?

unknown 15:25

What?

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Um let me explain. I we'll get to a point, I think it'll make sense to you. But I've had this dream of, because I love guacamole dip, and I'm sure many of you do as well, that I could someday just walk out of my house, there'd be this amazing avocado tree in my yard, and I could just pull an avocado off the tree, and of course it would be perfectly ripe. I could take it in my kitchen and make some amazing guacamole dip and eat it. And so, with that vision in mind, over the course of many years, I've probably purchased, oh, I was gifted one avocado tree. I've probably had four to five avocado trees over the course of my life, and I've killed every single one that I've ever received. Um, what I've I've learned some valuable lessons. It's important to water your plants. I've learned if it if a plant is going to survive, it can't rely upon me manually watering it. I have to have some sort of automated system to do that. I've I've also learned that although we live in an amazing place here in San Diego, the weather's awesome. Occasionally we do get these heat waves, we get Santa Anna's coming in, and it's really hot, temperatures give over a hundred. And for that young avocado tree, it's really tough, and the leaves fall off and die, and I've lost at least a couple that way. And the point is that that sapling young avocado tree struggles. It's very sensitive to all those things and other things that I just mentioned. But the mature tree, the avocado tree that is rooted deep down into the soil, that's been planted in a good location, but it's it's it's been there for a few years, and it's rooted down like this tree in Psalm 1, in a in a great place, and its roots have grown deep down, it survives. Right? That's when that avocado tree is going to flourish. And that's what we see in the lives of Christians, those that are headed down the path of the righteous and are pursuing a relationship with God and are trying their best to delight in God's word and study it and learn from it and apply it to their lives, those roots are going deep down. So when the struggles of life come, when the difficulties come, when the challenges come, when you're praying a prayer that you need God to answer, and maybe God doesn't answer it the way that you want to, or doesn't answer it in the timing that you wish he would have, or dry seasons in life come, you can survive those moments, right? Because you're rooted down. The foundation of your life is rooted down into God. But Psalm 1 gives us another picture to consider as well. Not only this tree, not but one of chaff. We're gonna look at that verse really quickly. One, the tree, is planted and rooted and sustained, right? Whereas the other, chaff, is is weightless and unstable and blown about. Let's start, before we read the verse, let's talk a little bit about what chaff is, because maybe some of you are unfamiliar with that, that term. I have a slide here that we'll look at that shows two men that are harvesting like a wheat, uh some kind of grain crop, wheat, barley, whatever it might be. And and the way the process works is the grain ripens, it kind of dries out, they cut it down, and they'll they'll they'll thrash it, they'll beat it into smaller chunks, trying to get the grain to fall out of the plant. And then they'll use their winnowing forks or or some method to basically throw up all this material, both the grain and the chaff or the husk, all this material that they don't need. They want to get at the food portion, the grain portion, and they'll use their winnowing forks, whatever, they'll throw it up into the air, and because of the weight and the density of the grain, it tends to fall straight back down. But the the weightlessness, the very lightweight of the chaff and the other debris, the wind catches it and blows it to the side, so you end up with these two separate piles. And so let's let's look at now that we maybe understand chaff a little bit better, let's look at verse 4. Not so the wicked, they are like chaff that the wind blows away. So we've made this transition here from talking about the righteous and the path of the righteous and the tree. Now we're headed down this other path talking about the path of the wicked and what they're like. And the imagery is chaff, which is very different from the tree. Chaff has no root, no weight, no stability, no nourishment, no foundation, no lasting value. It gets tossed about by whatever influence, like the wind or whatever, and people, whatever influence is around them that's the strongest, right? In a more modern way of maybe applying this idea of chaff and what that's like to our lives, I think many of us, probably all of us at times, are looking for answers to questions that we have. People are searching in our culture and society and world today, they're searching for things like identity. What is my identity? They're searching for purpose, fulfillment, truth, and meaning. And they're trying to find answers to these things while being disconnected from God, while being rooted into nothing or into, you know, sitting down with the mockers, right? Being connected in a way that's not going to lead them to the truth that is the real truth that comes from God. It reminds me a little bit of, you know, I will frequently tell our youth that God's word, the Bible, is his instruction manual to us in terms of how we should live our lives. That's where we go to to figure out his truth and answers to things like these. But, you know, I don't know many of you, and maybe this is more of a guy thing. I do this all the time. You get some new thing, it comes with an instruction manual, and you're like, I don't need that. I have it figured out. I can do it on my own until I get deeper into it and I realize, where's that instruction manual? And I need to look at some things there. And I think we as people, as humans, can fall into that trap as well. It's like we do our own thing, but we and we don't do it God's way, and it causes problems for us. We we answer these questions with things that are that get us going down the wrong path. People are influenced by things like uh cultural trends, social media, politics, you know, whatever the public opinion is at the time, personal feelings, even our emotions can deceive us, right? And they can be it's constantly shifting and changing. Where's the foundation? Where are you rooted at, rooted into with things like that, right? It it would be a struggle, right? It it's representative of the chaff, right? So we get this idea of the chaff versus the tree. So as we go into the next verse, verse five, this is where this idea of chaff becomes even more. Serious. Not only is it unstable and weightless and not rooted into anything and just tossed about by the things of this world, but there's a more serious component to it that we need to consider. And so with that, let's look at verse five. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. And the idea here is that we're all going to face judgment someday. The Bible makes that very clear. We're all going to have to stand before God and give an account for what we did with our life. And the wicked are going to fail in that judgment when they stand there. They're not going to be able to stand with the righteous because, like the chaff and that process of winnowing and separating the chaff from the grain, the same thing's going to happen to us at some point in the future. In fact, to that exact point, I want to reference really quickly Luke chapter 3, verse 17, where John the Baptist, they were asking John the Baptist, hey, are you the Messiah? Are you the promised one that God spoke about? And John was like, No, that's not me. The Messiah is still to come. But let me tell you about what he's going to be like. And he says this He says, His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. And ultimately, Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus is the one that John the Baptist was talking about here. And it presents this picture where Jesus is going to separate the chaff from the grain. And the chaff is going to be burned and quenched in an eternal fire. We're going to talk about that more in just a second. So if you've been keeping track so far, we've been talking about two paths that you can, you're headed down. Whether you realize it or not, you're headed down one of these paths. One leads towards God and towards righteousness. The other one leads away from God and down this path of wickedness and sinful living and things like that. There's two influences: influence of the world around us, sinners, ungodly people, people that want to either intentionally or unintentionally steer us away from God. And there's God's influence in our life. Specifically, we we're looking at the Bible today and delighting in that, where God, that's probably the best place where God can influence us is through his word and reading that. But I want to wrap up the message today by talking about two possible outcomes. Let's look at verse six here that talks about the outcomes. For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction. So there we have it, two outcomes. The way of the wicked is going to lead to destruction, this eternal separation from God in hell. And that's the scariest thing for me. I would not wish that on anyone. And it's even hard for my brain to fully imagine or comprehend an environment where God has fully removed Himself. And to imagine what that could possibly be like. I think when we think of hell, we often think of pain and torment and suffering for all of eternity. And yes, that will be bad. But the absence of God is a scary, scary thing. For the Lord also watches over the righteous. The righteous are going to end up with God in heaven someday. And when it says that God watches over them, it's not like God's sitting up in his throne in heaven and he's looking down at a distance and he's like, oh yeah, look at everything that's going on, as if he's distracted and maybe not interested that much. The Bible paints a very clear, different picture of what God thinks about and his kind of thoughts towards us. The Bible talks about how God, he cares, he's so interested in our lives that he knows the exact number of hairs on our head because that's important to him. He wants to know that for each and every one of us. The Bible also talks about how God knows us deeply and intimately, how he cares for us, how he watches over us, how he makes our paths straight, how he directs our steps, how he guides and protects us, how he strengthens us, right? All for this righteous person that's going down this path, that's leading them towards God, who the desire of their heart is to, God, I just want to do what you want me to do, right? What would you have for me? It's not about me. How can I live my life for a way that's honoring you and glorifying to you, right? God's gonna bless that. And ultimately, that person that's made Jesus Lord and Savior of their life, they're gonna end up with God in heaven someday. But that won't be the case for the wicked who are gonna end up in eternal destruction, right? Separation from God. The good news is that it's never too late to change the path that you're on. Whether you're you you you're a little bit concerned, maybe you're going down that path of the wicked, right? And maybe you need to make a shift and a change. It's never too late to do that. I want to wrap up things this morning by talking about two different groups of people in this room. I I think if if I were to talk with each of you individually, I think it's safe to say that I could put you in two different groups. One would be for those of you that call yourself Christians. You're you're followers of Jesus. You you love the Bible. Maybe at times you struggle to delight in the Bible and God's scripture, right? Like we were talking about earlier, but you you love the Bible, you love Jesus. You understand what God and Jesus have done for you, how much God loves you, right? I would my concern with a message like this today is that it could be easy to check out where you're like, I'm already headed down that path of righteousness. I'm I feel good about where I'm at. Let me encourage you, maybe a little bit, maybe challenge you so that my goal is that you walk away with something. Where is God trying to catch your attention with something? We've we've talked about a few things today. Influence. I think you could be still headed down the path of righteousness, but how are you being influenced in your life? Are there subtle influences, subtle compromises, small decisions that you're making that are maybe pulling you away from God a little bit? Maybe you're not as firmly walking down that path of righteousness as you think you are. I would ask you this: are you growing in your relationship with God? Right? It's hard to ignore this idea of growing when we look at this tree planted beside streams of water like we see in Psalm 1, and not think, growth and flourishing. Are you growing and flourishing in your relationship with God? Imagine taking a sapling, a small tree, and you plant it in an exact place like described in Psalm 1, and you came back 20 years later. You would likely expect that tree to be much bigger and just a mature tree, with if it's a fruit tree, it's producing lots of fruit and things like that. But what if you came back and it was the same size as you'd left it 20 years prior, right? Sometimes I look in the lives of others and I get concerned when I don't see growth necessarily happening in your life. And I say that in a loving and encouraging way. If maybe you feel like that's you, maybe God this morning is trying to prod and poke you a little bit to say, hey, what's the next step you can take to grow in your relationship with Him and grow closer to God? I would also ask you, is your life bearing fruit? That's an important aspect of the Christian life, like we see here in Psalm 1. It's one thing to proclaim Jesus, make him Lord and Savior of your life, and to come to church, this is great, hear a message like this, but it's so easy to have that be routine, and there's nothing really more happening more than that. And we're called as Christians to do so much more than that. God has made us on purpose. We are here for a purpose. We're made on purpose. We're here for a reason. To go out in the end of Matthew, it talks about going out and reaching the world. It's not just for pastors and a few people to go and share the gospel message to tell people about Jesus. That's something that we can all do. You can all invite someone to church. You can all look for someone that maybe you can come alongside with and invite into a Bible study, right? I was talking earlier, if you're struggling to delight in God's word, find some people where you can study and read God's Word together. Maybe that's part of it. Look for those opportunities where God has set up something for you to do that He wants you to do. That fruit. Look for that fruit in your life. So that's one group. The other group that I would address this morning is unbelievers, those that haven't made a decision in their life to follow Jesus. And maybe you haven't really heard it before in detail. Maybe you kind of know about Jesus and Christianity and the Bible and things like that, but you don't really know what it's all about. Or maybe you have and you've made like it's just not for you right now. You're not ready to make a decision like that. First of all, let me just say I'm excited and happy that you're here today. I don't think anyone here is just randomly here this morning by chance, and maybe this is something that you need to hear. But I would challenge you, with especially with Psalm 1 and this vivid imagery that we see about two paths and the path of the wicked ultimately leading to destruction, and how I and God don't want that for anyone. We're not promised tomorrow. Any one of us could be driving home today and we could be in a car accident, uh, have some kind of health issue and we might be gone. We need to, going back to how I started this message, right? There's a reason I think Psalm 1 here is in the very beginning of all the other Psalms. Is there some business that you need to do with God to at least better understand what salvation is? Why did God love us so much that He sent His one and only Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, to pay the penalty that we should have paid? Because you can't earn your way to heaven, you can't be good enough. A lot of people, if you were to randomly walk out in the street and ask people, are you do you consider yourself a good person? Like 95% of people would say that they are. And by a byproduct of that, most people think that, yeah, I'm gonna go to heaven because of that. But the Bible's very clear, you don't earn your way to heaven. You can't possibly be good enough. And if that's the case, and we've all violated God's standard, we've all lived sinful lives, we've all made mistakes, how do we get right with God? And that's where Jesus comes into play, right? His death for us made it God's rescue plan to save us. It made that path so that we could be in a right relationship with God again. If you're interested in hearing more about that, I would love to talk with you. I'll be out in the foyer after this message. Uh look for Dylan or Pastor Scott or any one of our leaders, go up to the welcome desk. Uh, don't leave today without doing business with God and talking more about that, getting your questions answered. And I'll end with this. Maybe God, in a in a spiritual, virtual way this morning has been next to you and he's been kind of poking you with his elbow and the ribs. Like, did you hear what Andy just said? Did you hear that? Maybe God's been trying to catch your attention with something, whatever it might be this morning. I would just ask you to think about that. Don't disregard it. Respond to it. What's that small next step that you can make that moves you down the path of righteousness closer to God, into this deeper, more meaningful relationship with God, where the roots of your life are sinking deep down into the earth? I would encourage you to pursue that, desire that, want that. Let me wrap us up in prayer and we will be done. Dear Lord Jesus, I just thank you for the opportunity to be here this morning. And I just pray that your Psalm 1, the things that discussed today, like your spirit moving in this room through me and through everyone right now, that it would not return void, Lord, that you would bring about changes in our life that would be the positive changes that you want to see, that changes that would draw us into a deeper and more meaningful relationship with you. I pray this in your name. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Thank you so much for joining us today at Sunrise Church. We hope this message encouraged you and blessed you. If one of the ways that you choose to worship with us here at Sunrise is by giving online, there's a link right here that you can follow and it'll take you to that payment portal. Everything that you donate helps not only go towards reaching people in the greater San Diego area, but also all around the world through our ministry partners. If you want to get further connected, whether in person or online, you can email this email right here, and either myself or some one of our team members will be there to answer it and help you get connected in any way that you need. Thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next week.