SPEAKER_00: This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's great to be with you today, Grand Parkway.
SPEAKER_01: If you have a Bible this morning, you want to turn to Psalm 1.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have one with you, I believe Psalm 1 is located on page 448, and the Bible's on your chairs are around there.
SPEAKER_01: It's a great privilege to preach at Grand Parkway to be with you.
SPEAKER_01: I love your church.
SPEAKER_01: I've known Neil McClendon for almost 20 years, so much so I try to do the same haircut and the same shirt, try to dress like him and be like him.
SPEAKER_01: I got a long way to go.
SPEAKER_01: I want to be like Neil when I grow up.
SPEAKER_01: I learned so much from him and just love that man.
SPEAKER_01: And so he calls and I say, sure, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: I love the honor to speak about God's word and speak uh from God's word to the people of Graham Parkway today.
SPEAKER_01: I'm married.
SPEAKER_01: Uh this week will be my 22nd wedding anniversary.
SPEAKER_01: My wife Kathleen have four kids.
SPEAKER_01: Uh a couple are in your student ministry right now, a couple over here in the front row.
SPEAKER_01: Um I'm sure they'd love for me to point them out so you can wave.
SPEAKER_01: Esther, you want to wave it, everybody?
SPEAKER_01: She's waving right there.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so uh we're just privileged to be here uh with you.
SPEAKER_01: I love the fact that we're on mission together in Fort Bend County to see it saturated with the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Uh this county has so much need and so much um just just opportunities for us to just proclaim uh the risen glorious Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad that our churches get to do it together.
SPEAKER_01: And there's there's other good churches out there too, um, but just so glad we get to do it together.
SPEAKER_01: Um, when I when I was thinking about this idea the other day about the things in my life that I've thought would make me happy.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but sometimes I think, man, if I had this, or if I could go to this, or we could do this, then man, that that would just make me so happy.
SPEAKER_01: And and and I and to be honest with you, and I know you know I know each other and true confession, it's church, you know, we should put on the church fake smile, but to be honest with you, I've done some really I've thought some really stupid things would make me happy.
SPEAKER_01: For example, when I was in middle school, the really cool kids and popular kids had polo shirts, Ralph Lauren polo shirts, just the pullover, two buttons, the guy on the horse right here on the chest.
SPEAKER_01: You know, that was just what the cool kids wore, I think is when they really got first popular.
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I lived a long time ago when I was in middle school, but I didn't get to have those things.
SPEAKER_01: My dad thought, oh, it's way too expensive.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do what you know God's people should do.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna mail order your shirts.
SPEAKER_01: And not mail order like Amazon, that's really cool to order stuff off there, and you get that box in the mail, and that's awesome.
SPEAKER_01: No, this was back when mail order was lame and awful, and you would tell no one back in the day.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he had a catalog.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't know what that is, you should ask somebody, Google that later.
SPEAKER_01: And you flip through this book, and he just buys shirts now.
SPEAKER_01: Now, to be honest and truthful with you, the shirts that he would order looked just like the polo shirts, except on uh the chest there, there was no little guy on the horse.
SPEAKER_01: There was a pocket, okay?
SPEAKER_01: But you know, all the cool kids had the little guy on the horse.
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I just felt kind of like I mean if that would make me happy if I could have a shirt like that.
SPEAKER_01: So my birthday was coming around.
SPEAKER_01: My mom asked, What do you want for your birthday?
SPEAKER_01: And I said, I want, I don't want a cake, I don't want a party, I want one polo shirt.
SPEAKER_01: Because my thought was I'll just wear it every day.
SPEAKER_01: Watch it on the weekends, it'd be fine, middle schooler, you know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_01: And so um, so my birthday comes, and you know, she gives me this gift, and I can tell it's kind of goosy.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay, maybe, maybe I'm ripping it open, and there I see the label polo by Ralph Lauren.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh yes, now, now I'm gonna be happy, now I'll belong, now people, you know, I'll be included, I'll be welcomed into the throngs of the cool kid.
SPEAKER_01: It's just gonna be amazing, amazing.
SPEAKER_01: And then I look at the chest, and there's a pocket.
SPEAKER_01: The little guy ain't there.
SPEAKER_01: The little guy's down at the bottom of the shirt.
SPEAKER_01: Because she got it on clearance, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And the little guy at the bottom that in my school has to be tucked in.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just like, oh, mom, you're killing me, you know, and and happiness once again eluded me.
SPEAKER_01: And that's just one of the many silly things I've thought over the years to make us happy.
SPEAKER_01: And and you probably have things thought you've thought about buy this, go here, do this, it would make me happy.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Americans were obsessed with happiness.
SPEAKER_01: You Google how to be happy.
SPEAKER_01: I Googled it this week, and just when I hit it, 551 million results.
SPEAKER_01: 551 million results on how to be happy.
SPEAKER_01: I copied down some selections from the first page it went to, and I thought I would read them to you to tell you how crazy we are in our search of happiness.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, there are there was a page that had 10 scientifically ways proven to make you incredibly happy.
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, science, they haven't know what's going on, okay?
SPEAKER_01: They're scientifically proven to make me incredibly happy.
SPEAKER_01: But there's also the next one was three ways to be happy.
SPEAKER_01: So they're not scientists, simple people here.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we just knocked out seven.
SPEAKER_01: But then we went back to the next one was ten ways to be happier.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we're back to ten.
SPEAKER_01: Then there were seven steps to becoming a happier person.
SPEAKER_01: Then there was ten things to stop doing so you can be happy.
SPEAKER_01: I got now, I gotta stop doing some stuff, okay?
SPEAKER_01: I got these other ways, I got these steps, now I gotta stop.
SPEAKER_01: And then the last one on this, the first page I went to that was just really just a gift to you.
SPEAKER_01: 103 ways to live a happier life.
SPEAKER_01: That's exhausting, you know.
SPEAKER_01: I'm forget that this happiness is way overrated.
SPEAKER_01: Forget it.
SPEAKER_01: But we're obsessed with being happy.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you go to Amazon, there's all these books about happiness.
SPEAKER_01: We sing songs about being happy, we're happy with rooms without a roof, which is ridiculous in Houston.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, just we just we're crazy about this idea about happiness.
SPEAKER_01: And so then we come to the Bible, and you think, oh, we're coming to the Bible, we're at church, we'll show them a thing or two because we don't like that stuff here.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says, you know, thou should sucketh on a lemon in Jesus' name, and that's just that's how we're supposed to live.
SPEAKER_01: But we're gonna read Psalm 1.
SPEAKER_01: Now, Psalm 1 has been called the gateway, the entrance into the whole book of Psalms, and you've you've been studying the kinds of Psalms they are, and the scholars think that Psalm 1, this sets up the whole deal.
SPEAKER_01: This sets up the whole book.
SPEAKER_01: All the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: Start off, this is the gate, and then you get to the gate, you find out this incredible thing.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, man, this is how they start the Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, it comes back to this one simple thing, a simple truth that many of us know and many of us believe, but we forget so easily.
SPEAKER_01: So, Psalm one, let's read together.
SPEAKER_01: I'll start in verse one.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.
SPEAKER_01: He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.
SPEAKER_01: In all that he does he prospers.
SPEAKER_01: The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
SPEAKER_01: For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
SPEAKER_01: Now, you start reading the Psalm and you go, What does this have to do with happiness?
SPEAKER_01: Well, verse one, Psalm one, Blessed is the man, has everything to do with happiness.
SPEAKER_01: That word blessed there is a very rich word in the original language of the Hebrew.
SPEAKER_01: When it's uh connected to God, and you read Psalms, they'll say, you know, Blessed be the name of the Lord, bless the Lord, oh my soul.
SPEAKER_01: It is connected to praise, give praise and honor and glory to God, the praise that he deserves.
SPEAKER_01: When it's connected to people, the word connotates happiness.
SPEAKER_01: There's even translations that'll translate this, happy is the man, or the happiness of man is found.
SPEAKER_01: It just comes back to happy.
SPEAKER_01: Now, it's not happy like, oh, you know, I get to go wherever I want to for lunch today, happy.
SPEAKER_01: It is this idea of complete well-being, total fulfillment, the total package of happiness.
SPEAKER_01: When you think they lived happily ever after, that's the kind of connotation is found in this word blessed.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed, happy is the man.
SPEAKER_01: Now, it comes across right off the fact that it's going to say where you don't find happiness.
SPEAKER_01: It says, you don't find happiness by walking in the counsel of the wicked.
SPEAKER_01: Now, walking is this idea of what you do in your day-to-day life, a counsel being this idea of the, you know, just what you're hearing, the things you're hearing, just a normal day of life, and the way of the wicked.
SPEAKER_01: The wicked being this group of people that they disobey God, but they're just doing whatever they want.
SPEAKER_01: It's not like they're, you know, you're shaking their fist to heaven.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they are, but they're not doing that necessarily directly.
SPEAKER_01: They're just people that disregard God's word.
SPEAKER_01: They don't know God's word.
SPEAKER_01: They're just doing what feels right and sounds right.
SPEAKER_01: If it feels good, don't hurt nobody.
SPEAKER_01: What's wrong with it, right?
SPEAKER_01: We maybe have heard something like that.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not where happiness is found, walking in their counsel.
SPEAKER_01: Nor is it found in standing in the way of the sinner.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the way of the sinner, this is an idea of behaving.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the words change from wicked to sinner.
SPEAKER_01: This idea now, sinner is someone who's deliberately disobeying God.
SPEAKER_01: They see the line, they see the sign that says, do not walk on grass, and they step on the grass.
SPEAKER_01: They may even dance a jig and hop, because they're deliberately disobeying, disregarding, being disloyal to God.
SPEAKER_01: And the last is sitting in the seat of the scoffer.
SPEAKER_01: This idea of belonging, this idea of sitting down, and the scoffer is the worst of them all.
SPEAKER_01: Because the scoffer is not just doing what he feels like.
SPEAKER_01: The scoffer is going way beyond just deliberately crossing the lines and boundaries that God said.
SPEAKER_01: The scoffer is now deliberately shaking their fist of God, mocking God, deliberately scorning God and showing contempt for God as a person.
SPEAKER_01: And the writer says, this is not where happiness is found.
SPEAKER_01: Bottom line, dumb it down, put it in one symbol.
SPEAKER_01: Happiness is not found in all the places our world says it's found.
SPEAKER_01: And by saying where happiness isn't found, he is connecting it immediately to where happiness is found because all this is in connection with God.
SPEAKER_01: All this is in connection with our Creator.
SPEAKER_01: It says happiness is found by not relating to our creator in this way.
SPEAKER_01: So then he goes to verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: He says, now here's where you find it.
SPEAKER_01: Here's where you've been looking for, here's where you should get your shovel and go digging, right here in this line.
SPEAKER_01: But his delight is in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And on his law he meditates day and night.
SPEAKER_01: Now the word delight, you know that word.
SPEAKER_01: It's a high degree of pleasure or enjoyment.
SPEAKER_01: You delight in things.
SPEAKER_01: You delight in air conditioning on 100, you know, 101 day Houston afternoon.
SPEAKER_01: You delight in a cold drink of water.
SPEAKER_01: You delight in bluebell ice cream, and you're surviving the great, you know, famine of bluebell right now.
SPEAKER_01: But you delight, maybe you delight in barbecue, you delight in your kids, you delight, you know, you don't you delight in a trip, a vacation, you delight in time with friends.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you have a lot of things you delight in.
SPEAKER_01: This writer says, blessed is the man, happy is the person, the happiness of people is found in having great enjoyment and pleasure.
SPEAKER_01: You're like, yeah, yeah, this is great.
SPEAKER_01: In the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know about you, but when I think about the law of the Lord and happiness and pleasure, those things sometimes don't go together.
SPEAKER_01: But the Bible does not know that reality.
SPEAKER_01: It invites you to another reality where pleasure and enjoyment and the law of the Lord comes together.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm captivated by this phrase.
SPEAKER_01: Because when the psalmist wrote it, he only had the first five books of the Bible: the books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's saying here that enjoy happy is the man who finds great enjoyment and pleasure in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Have you read those books?
SPEAKER_01: You know, people start the big Bible reading plans and they go, I'm gonna read through the Bible this year.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis, oh yeah, great stories.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus, great stories, all that.
SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to Pastor Neil's sermon, it's gonna be awesome.
SPEAKER_01: And then you get the numbers, oh well, that's a little different, but God's still got some good stories in there.
SPEAKER_01: And then Leviticus.
SPEAKER_01: We lose a lot of good people in Leviticus.
SPEAKER_01: They just disappear.
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like a picture.
SPEAKER_01: Have you seen this guy?
SPEAKER_01: He was reading Leviticus, but we haven't seen him since.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we just lose a lot of people there because we don't know what to do with it.
SPEAKER_01: But this guy says, no, no, no, happy is the person, fulfilled is the person, it finds great delight and enjoyment in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That's an amazing statement we could ponder all day.
SPEAKER_01: But we read this whole passage as New Testament Christians in light of the totality of scripture.
SPEAKER_01: So we know when he's saying law, or that word can be translated, instruction, that we're talking about the scripture, the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so we get this, and he's saying, No, the happiness, the complete well-being you're looking for is found in the scripture, in the words of God.
SPEAKER_01: This is amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Because we're talking about now the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of people say, well, you know, the Bible, that's just a book of religion, right?
SPEAKER_01: No, it's a book of revelation.
SPEAKER_01: Revelation is God revealing himself to show how we might be in harmony with him, in relationship with him.
SPEAKER_01: A book of religion written by people to make sense of the world around us and the rules we need to do and abide by so that you know we can have a happy life or something.
SPEAKER_01: But this is saying a happy life comes from God revealing himself.
SPEAKER_01: And as we look at what the scripture says about itself, we're reminded of a very famous verse you're you're probably familiar with it from the book of 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verses 16 and 17.
SPEAKER_01: It says, All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training and righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: That the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.
SPEAKER_01: If you go back to verse 16 there, it says, All scriptures breathe out by God.
SPEAKER_01: Some translations say, all scriptures God breathed.
SPEAKER_01: That he breathed it out.
SPEAKER_01: Now, for us, you know, breathing is life.
SPEAKER_01: You hold your breath too long underwater in the swimming pool, you come out and you gotta do that big gasp of air.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you think about it.
SPEAKER_01: If our breath is life, the script this verse here is saying that the scripture, the word of God, this is the life of God coming out onto a page.
SPEAKER_01: Coming out through a person.
SPEAKER_01: And it's profitable.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the scripture is unique that through history and poetry and wise sayings that we call Proverbs and prophetic things about the future and people's hearts and instruction, God reveals his heart to us.
SPEAKER_01: That the Bible, the scripture, it is more than a book for us.
SPEAKER_01: It's more than an app on your phone.
SPEAKER_01: It is the very words of God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: Now, you might know that, but it's real easy to gloss over it because it's not just the ideas that are the word words of God.
SPEAKER_01: These are the very words from God, all breathed out by him, the whole of them, all of them.
SPEAKER_01: They will not lead you astray.
SPEAKER_01: They are totally trustworthy, they are completely sufficient for you to sink the roots, as we'll see, of your life into.
SPEAKER_01: And this, the writer said, Oh, let's just open the gate of the Psalms, all the things you're gonna read about, the gamut of human emotion, and let's talk about what we really want to talk about.
SPEAKER_01: How do I get happy?
SPEAKER_01: You get happy by delighting in the revelatory truth and word and law of God.
SPEAKER_01: That's how you find it.
SPEAKER_01: Because these are his words.
SPEAKER_01: And when you think about the word of God, the word of God is always action.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, think about it.
SPEAKER_01: Every time God speaks, something happens.
SPEAKER_01: Our Bible starts with God spoke and everything was made.
SPEAKER_01: Out of nothing, the creation came.
SPEAKER_01: From planets to the earthworm, from stars to art varks.
SPEAKER_01: He spoke and it happened.
SPEAKER_01: I can barely get my kids to clean up their room.
SPEAKER_01: God speaks, and the cosmos is made.
SPEAKER_01: And it happens.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus comes along.
SPEAKER_01: And when Jesus speaks, what happens?
SPEAKER_01: The spiritual forces of darkness shriek in terror and flee from him.
SPEAKER_01: The disease reverses itself.
SPEAKER_01: Death goes away, and life is regenerated.
SPEAKER_01: People all of a sudden are made right with God by a word from his mouth.
SPEAKER_01: These are the words of our God.
SPEAKER_01: And so the scripture, when you come to the scripture, these are the words of our God.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just a good book to study on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just something to read 15 minutes every day.
SPEAKER_01: It's beyond that.
SPEAKER_01: Those are great things.
SPEAKER_01: It's not, it's better than a class, it's better than a small group, it's better than a clay, you know, anything.
SPEAKER_01: These are the words of God.
SPEAKER_01: So when I come to Him, do I expect that kind of action?
SPEAKER_01: You know, you go to a concert and you know all of a sudden the lights get dim and the music starts rumbling and the fog starts going.
SPEAKER_01: You go to a movie, you've been talking, but then the lights go down, and the 20 minutes of preview start, but whatever.
SPEAKER_01: And then the movie starts, or you're expecting, you go to something, and there's an expectation.
SPEAKER_01: Here comes the waiter, they put out the little thing, they put the tray, they're about to put your meal down, something good's about to happen.
SPEAKER_01: Do you open up your Bible and think, man, something good's about to happen?
SPEAKER_01: The God who spoke the cosmos into being, who spoke and planets started spinning, Jesus who spoke and disease left, who spoke and demons fled, who spoke and people were forgiven of all their sins.
SPEAKER_01: He's about to speak to me.
SPEAKER_01: Do you have that kind of expectation?
SPEAKER_01: Because this is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Now you get kind of what the Psalm 1 writer was saying.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, happy, happy day is the man who delights in the word of God, in his law.
SPEAKER_01: God is so identified with the scripture that to come to the Bible with an open heart is to come to God with an open heart.
SPEAKER_01: God was so identified with the scripture that to disobey the scripture is to disobey God.
SPEAKER_01: That's why it is ludicrous and totally unsound to say, well, I love God, but there's things about the Bible I disagree with, there's things about the Bible I'm going to disregard.
SPEAKER_01: It's the Bible that I struggle with.
SPEAKER_01: No, no.
SPEAKER_01: You can't have one without the other, friend.
SPEAKER_01: Because the Bible, the scripture, is his revelation of himself.
SPEAKER_01: His revelation that he's thrown his breath on a page and he said, Here I am.
SPEAKER_01: Right here in this book.
SPEAKER_01: You should expect when you open it, when you click the app, when you walk into a classroom, when you sit down in a small group, when you get up and the pastor says, Open your Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: There ought to be something growing in us.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, what is about to happen?
SPEAKER_01: Heaven's about to be unleashed and it's about to get on in here.
SPEAKER_01: Because the words of our God are about to be spoken and talked about and cherished and explained.
SPEAKER_01: We don't worship the Bible, but we revere it and we love it.
SPEAKER_01: My wife and I dated for two and a half years long distance before we got married.
SPEAKER_01: She went to Baylor and I went to the University of Houston.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so go cougs, cougar high, uh right there.
SPEAKER_01: And um, so why and back in our day, I'm I'm you know, I'm younger than some of you in the room, I'm older than many of you in the room too, but um, but you know, so my day, we uh didn't have cell phones and text messaging and email.
SPEAKER_01: We had one phone call a week because we had something called long distance rates, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Any of y'all remember that?
SPEAKER_01: Long distance rates out there?
SPEAKER_01: And so you had to watch that.
SPEAKER_01: And if we went over our hour, my dad was gonna come knocking on my door.
SPEAKER_01: I did not want that.
SPEAKER_01: Um and then, you know, when we didn't talk, we had to write a letter.
SPEAKER_01: Let me explain.
SPEAKER_01: You get a piece of paper and a writing instrument, okay?
SPEAKER_01: And then you start writing things down.
SPEAKER_01: It's like email, but no electronics involved.
SPEAKER_01: And much better and longer and all that.
SPEAKER_01: And so uh she we would write cards and letters all the time to each other, and I kept every one of them.
SPEAKER_01: And I kept them in this long uh envelope, and I just stuffed them in there, and it was, you know, starting to tear because it was two and a half years of them.
SPEAKER_01: But when there were seasons where we were both busy, finals, you know, school, or or we had kind of you know talked an hour and a half last week, so it's only been half an hour this week, and I missed her so bad, I take that envelope and I just dump it all out and spread them all on my floor, and I'd read every card, every letter, I'd smell them.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to be close.
SPEAKER_01: You alright?
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: I missed her.
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be with her because that was an extension of herself.
SPEAKER_01: And even this day, when I see her write something in her handwriting, I'll tell her, I love your handwriting.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because I spent so much time just pouring it over it.
SPEAKER_01: Get to know her and get to know her and think about this and that.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder how your heart toward the scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Can you come to it like that?
SPEAKER_01: Can you come to it like, oh, I want to know him?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I want to know him, I wanna see who he is, his goodness, and his grace, his glory, his majesty, and I want to just be caught up in his word and know him.
SPEAKER_01: See, I go to the Bible to meet God.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible is better, friends, than any place else you go to meet God.
SPEAKER_01: You can meet him in nature, it'd be better when you go to nature to take your Bible with you.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's where he's always gonna be.
SPEAKER_01: You have a dream and a vision, and yeah, the Bible says God speaks through a dream and a vision.
SPEAKER_01: You have a dream and a vision, and you think it's from God, you got a one in four chance.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: It could be some kind of demonic thing giving you some kind of crazy thought.
SPEAKER_01: It could be you're just crazy.
SPEAKER_01: It could be the sushi that you had last night going, it's payback time, all right, and just coming right back at you.
SPEAKER_01: Or fourth, it could be God.
SPEAKER_01: You got a one in four chance.
SPEAKER_01: Every time I open the Bible, every time I open it up and I say, Lord, speak to me, and I read it in context, and I submit to what he says every time, it's him.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's his word, it's his word breathed out on the page.
SPEAKER_01: Do you delight in it?
SPEAKER_01: Does it thrill you?
SPEAKER_01: Do you ever get giddy about it?
SPEAKER_01: Do you ever get up and you get up late?
SPEAKER_01: Do you ever have the thought, oh, I got up too late, I'll miss the time in the word.
SPEAKER_01: Forget coffee, forget breakfast.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read the word because I will delight in it, because that's where happiness is found.
SPEAKER_01: That's where it's found right there.
SPEAKER_01: It's found in delight.
SPEAKER_01: Abiding in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Well, how do I delight in it?
SPEAKER_01: Well, he tells you in verse 2, on his law, he meditates day and night.
SPEAKER_01: And so meditating, it's more than just a quick reading.
SPEAKER_01: It's more than a class.
SPEAKER_01: It's more than a sermon.
SPEAKER_01: Those are all fantastic things that we should do.
SPEAKER_01: And it's different from Eastern meditation.
SPEAKER_01: You might hear meditation, you think, isn't that what you do?
SPEAKER_01: And you like empty your mind and you like start humming for like an hour and a half.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's that's maybe Eastern mystical meditation.
SPEAKER_01: But biblical meditation is filling your mind with a scripture and chewing on it.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, this word meditating, if we just drug it all down to its essence purest form in the Hebrew, it's the idea of muttering.
SPEAKER_01: You ever remember some of the mutters?
SPEAKER_01: They just go around, uh, tell you one of them, I'll do it.
SPEAKER_01: You're like, what are you saying?
SPEAKER_01: Ah, nothing.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean, they're reciting the Gettysburg Address.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know, but they're just muttering.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: They got something going on in their head, and they got it's so going on in their head, they're muttering about it.
SPEAKER_01: They're just saying under their breath and drive, may drive you crazy.
SPEAKER_01: You may be a mutterer, you drive us crazy.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, but but that's what he's saying here.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, this is something, it's like your mental chewing gum.
SPEAKER_01: You just chew on it.
SPEAKER_01: Well, when do I chew on this?
SPEAKER_01: Is my 15 minutes in the morning?
SPEAKER_01: No, he says day and night all the time.
SPEAKER_01: So much so that I just start muttering.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, blesses the man who walks in the way of the Lord, doesn't sit, doesn't stand, doesn't walk in the council, but this is the lie.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just muttering about, you know, just thinking about, oh man, the ways of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're just muttering about day and night, because and you're just dwelling on, thinking about, see, biblical meditation, uh, one writer says, it's like it's like answering prayer.
SPEAKER_01: You know, prayer, we usually say prayer is like kind of if there were two forms of prayer, calling prayer.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we normally talk about, prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, let's pray, let's call upon the name of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Biblical meditation is like answering prayer because now I'm going and God spoke first.
SPEAKER_01: God's always the initiator, he's always the first one at the game, first one at the table.
SPEAKER_01: He has spoken, and now biblical meditation is I'm gonna go, I'm gonna read this, I'm gonna take it, I'm gonna chew on it, I'm gonna think, Lord, what are you trying to say to me?
SPEAKER_01: What do you want to say to them?
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read it again, I might write it on a card, I might think about it, I might talk to my wife about it, I might share it in a meeting, I might be thinking about it as a drive, I might listen to a recording, I'm just I'm just kind of thinking over it and over, Lord, what are you saying?
SPEAKER_01: I'm having this conversation with the Lord about this.
SPEAKER_01: So much so that I'm inviting God through the text to come and grab me by the collar and go, believe this, man.
SPEAKER_01: Believe this, think about this, live this way, repent, trust me, pray big, you know, love large, you know, all these kind of things.
SPEAKER_01: It grabs me and says to say.
SPEAKER_01: See, meditation's not just reading.
SPEAKER_01: I can be just dying of thirst, and I read a sign that says water, and I go, okay, I read the sign, it says water.
SPEAKER_01: That's a customary reading in the Bible for most Christians.
SPEAKER_01: There's a sign it says water, I read the sign.
SPEAKER_01: I've studied the sign, I can tell you where the sign was made.
SPEAKER_01: I can tell you the original language of the sign, I can tell you all the angles of the arrow pointed.
SPEAKER_01: What's the point of the sign?
SPEAKER_01: To get you to the water, to take a long drink in your soul of the water.
SPEAKER_01: That's biblical meditation.
SPEAKER_01: I look at the sign, but I don't just stop at the sign.
SPEAKER_01: I let the sign get me to the water.
SPEAKER_01: So I can take in a long drink, so I can swish it around in my mouth, so I can go, ah, when I'm done.
SPEAKER_01: And then I can drink it again and again, because it never runs dry.
SPEAKER_01: So this is the path to happiness, because when you go to the word, you're going to meet him.
SPEAKER_01: And this is how he's revealing himself to us through his word by his spirit.
SPEAKER_01: And he describes this.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what this happy life is like, here's what this blessed life is like.
SPEAKER_01: It promises things.
SPEAKER_01: What is biblical meditation?
SPEAKER_01: Promise three quick things.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, a nourished life.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 3, he's like a tree planted by streams of water.
SPEAKER_01: What happens to a tree planted by streams of water?
SPEAKER_01: Its roots go deep and it draws up life from the stream.
SPEAKER_01: So when I sink my life into the scripture, and I go all in with it, and I start delighting, I start seeking to have great enjoyment and pleasure from it, I'm drawing life from it.
SPEAKER_01: Love and peace from it.
SPEAKER_01: I go there to be reminded what makes me secure.
SPEAKER_01: I go there to remind me what makes me significant.
SPEAKER_01: I go there to remind me who satisfies my soul.
SPEAKER_01: Not what, not where, but who.
SPEAKER_01: I have a nourished life that is strong in God.
SPEAKER_01: Number two, I have a seasonal, fruitful life.
SPEAKER_01: It says that it yields its fruit in its season.
SPEAKER_01: So if I'm a tree and I'm drawing up a life from the water, something happens internally and fruit comes out of this tree.
SPEAKER_01: Something happens to you and me as we draw life from the scripture.
SPEAKER_01: We delight in it, we take pleasure from it, we're chewing on it, we're muttering on it, things start happening.
SPEAKER_01: The word of God is never static, friend.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, spoke, cosmos, ants, you know, galaxies, disease gone, demons flee, forgiveness given, death, you know, told to go away.
SPEAKER_01: These words in my heart, never static.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's seasonal.
SPEAKER_01: That means there's some seasons where I may not feel anything, sense anything, but that's alright.
SPEAKER_01: Tree doesn't bear fruit every season.
SPEAKER_01: It's just drawing up life.
SPEAKER_01: Things are happening that we cannot even see.
SPEAKER_01: But in season, all of a sudden people will come around you go, you sure are a lot more patient than you used to be.
SPEAKER_01: What is that?
SPEAKER_01: It's a fruit of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Because I've been drawing a life from his word.
SPEAKER_01: Your wife tells you, man, you sure are a lot more kinder and patient with the kids.
SPEAKER_01: What's going on in this season?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's just fruit from my time with the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: It's fruit from drawing alive from him.
SPEAKER_01: It blesses your relationships.
SPEAKER_01: It'll bless you on your job.
SPEAKER_01: You'll be changed because his life is now within you.
SPEAKER_01: And then the third thing, a stable life.
SPEAKER_01: A stable life.
SPEAKER_01: It says in verse 4, the wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.
SPEAKER_01: Chaff is that dry, scaly casings of the seeds of grain that when they would thresh the wheat, you know, they just kind of throw it up and the wind would blow away.
SPEAKER_01: You can't eat it, there's nothing to it.
SPEAKER_01: He's seeing that's like the wicked.
SPEAKER_01: That's like all these people, the counsel of the way of the wicked, the people who disregard God or disloyal to God, who shake their fists at God.
SPEAKER_01: They cannot stand the winds of life.
SPEAKER_01: And we all know this.
SPEAKER_01: The winds of life are gonna blow.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are feeling it right now.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you just got out of feeling it, and some of us are about to feel it.
SPEAKER_01: Because Jesus said, in this world we'll have trouble.
SPEAKER_01: What gives us stability when the winds blow and we lose our job, the doctor tells us there's trouble, our kids are rebelling, what finances are tied?
SPEAKER_01: What gives us stability in those times?
SPEAKER_01: Wishful thinking, hope for a better future?
SPEAKER_01: Roots in his word.
SPEAKER_01: Delighting to know that all those things do not have the last say.
SPEAKER_01: But our king does.
SPEAKER_01: How do I know that?
SPEAKER_01: Just reciting those truths in my head?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I'm drawing life from this.
SPEAKER_01: His spirit and my spirit.
SPEAKER_01: We're intermingling, we're having an interaction, and I'm drawing life from the sacred text that's more than a text, it's the living, breathing word of God.
SPEAKER_01: And I have a stable life.
SPEAKER_01: So the world goes crazy when the Supreme Court decides different things.
SPEAKER_01: World goes crazy when people get shot in movie theaters, the world goes crazy all around us, and we should be moved, and we should be sober, but we don't go crazy.
SPEAKER_01: Because our life is stable.
SPEAKER_01: Our roots run deep.
SPEAKER_01: We know that our God reigns and he rules, and this will all work out his way, and we're in his hand and his times, and our job is to be faithful, by his grace be fruitful, we can be stable.
SPEAKER_01: How can you so stable when the world's going to, you know, in a in a handbasket?
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because my life is rooted in the law of the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that there I will stand.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what it what does it make you in the midst of a crazy world?
SPEAKER_01: It makes you happy.
SPEAKER_01: Happy beyond your circumstances.
SPEAKER_01: Happy because we draw life from Him.
SPEAKER_01: I know you love the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: You go to Grand Parkway.
SPEAKER_01: One of my dearest friends is your pastor.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta love the word to listen to this guy, you know?
SPEAKER_01: I mean that with all respect.
SPEAKER_01: I know some of your staff, they want to teach you the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta you gotta like want it or want to read it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm asking you, do you delight in it?
SPEAKER_01: Are you soaking in it?
SPEAKER_01: Are you drawing life from it?
SPEAKER_01: Go to the next level.
SPEAKER_01: Don't just be the typical Christian that reads their Bible once a day.
SPEAKER_01: Go all the way, soak your soul in it.
SPEAKER_01: Amazing things will happen.
SPEAKER_01: You'll know the living God like never before.
SPEAKER_01: Your life, you'll have moments, you'll have burning bush moments because you'll be reading a verse, and all of a sudden you'll hear your name and you'll kick off your shoes because now you're like, oh, it's holy ground.
SPEAKER_01: And it'll be found as he speaks from this.
SPEAKER_01: Now we have a problem.
SPEAKER_01: Because the psalm, don't you think?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, I don't know if the guys talked about this as they've been preaching to you.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the psalms just end weird.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: They're like, We love you, Lord, you're great.
SPEAKER_01: Now smash their heads against the rocks.
SPEAKER_01: Like, what in the world?
SPEAKER_01: You know, and they're just all these kind of weird psalms, okay?
SPEAKER_01: They're just weird.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they talked about that.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 1 is one of those psalms because we're going, man, draw life from the word.
SPEAKER_01: Look at all these things I get, all that.
SPEAKER_01: This is incredible.
SPEAKER_01: And then it goes down, therefore the wicked will not stand the judgment.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, now those people are going to get it.
SPEAKER_01: No sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
SPEAKER_01: For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.
SPEAKER_01: And if you're a reflective person, you get to first six and you go, So which one am I?
SPEAKER_01: Where do I land in all this?
SPEAKER_01: Because more likely than I care to admit, I've kind of walked in the council of the wicked.
SPEAKER_01: Kind of done what I wanted.
SPEAKER_01: I've disbelieved.
SPEAKER_01: I've intentionally been a disobedient.
SPEAKER_01: I may have, in my heart, never shaken my fists in a real ugly way at him, but I sure have probably thought, you're not that good.
SPEAKER_01: Who can stand?
SPEAKER_01: What is our hope?
SPEAKER_01: We're all in trouble.
SPEAKER_01: But see again, we read Psalm 1 and the totality of Scripture, and even Psalm 1, this gate into the Psalms, is pointing toward something bigger, something greater, because the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
SPEAKER_01: That the word became flesh, and Jesus Christ came and dwelt among us, and he lived the perfect, sinless life we all should have lived.
SPEAKER_01: He obeyed every eye, he died every eye and crossed every T of the law.
SPEAKER_01: He fulfilled the law on our behalf.
SPEAKER_01: All the rules in Leviticus that we lost, John, he fulfilled them all perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: Perfectly and completely and joyfully.
SPEAKER_01: And then he offered himself up on the cross as a sacrifice in our place for our sins, for all the laws we broke intentionally and unintentionally.
SPEAKER_01: For all the ones in heart we said were ridiculous, and all of the ones we said out loud, I'm not doing that.
SPEAKER_01: He offered himself in our place as our substitute, as our sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: And what's he quoting on the cross?
SPEAKER_01: The Psalms.
SPEAKER_01: He's quoting, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
SPEAKER_01: What's happened?
SPEAKER_01: He has become the wicked so we can become the righteous.
SPEAKER_01: The righteous one has taken upon himself a wickedness, so we wicked ones could be blessed to be called the righteous in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_01: So then you get to Psalm 1, and now you read, what am I delighting in?
SPEAKER_01: The law of the Lord?
SPEAKER_01: It's taken me straight to Jesus, the Savior, the King, the sacrifice, the risen one, the victorious one, the glorious one, the living water who I put my roots in is really in him.
SPEAKER_01: This is just a pathway.
SPEAKER_01: And one day, one day, I won't need a book.
SPEAKER_01: Just like the day I stuck.
SPEAKER_01: I don't read my wife's letters anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: I'm married to her.
SPEAKER_01: One day we won't have Bible time anymore.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because he'll be here.
SPEAKER_01: He'll be with us.
SPEAKER_01: The light of his glorious presence will be our light.
SPEAKER_01: So why wait till then?
SPEAKER_01: Sink your roots deep now.
SPEAKER_01: Delight.
SPEAKER_01: Find great pleasure and enjoyment in his word.
SPEAKER_01: Let me pray for us.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_01: I thank you for the word made flesh, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: That this isn't just a book of rules I gotta obey.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just a book of stories that I get lessons from.
SPEAKER_01: It is a revelation of yourself and your heart and how you make us right through Jesus, how we experience your presence by the Spirit and our call to make you known in the world.
SPEAKER_01: What a gift.
SPEAKER_01: And I know that these men and women, there are many of them, Lord.
SPEAKER_01: They really love the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: I pray you'd increase their hunger for it.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, many of the room think they they they're pretty much Bible experts.
SPEAKER_01: I pray you'd just blow the roof off that.
SPEAKER_01: And you would show them more and more who you are, and they would draw more life from the living water that is you found through your word.
SPEAKER_01: For all of us in the room, increase our desire for the scripture.
SPEAKER_01: To read it, to chew on it, to obey it, to pray it, to hear it proclaimed, to see it lived and go, wow, there's the word.
SPEAKER_01: God's alive and moving.
SPEAKER_01: And Lord, for those of us who've grown cold in our Bible, intake, blow the dust off our hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's what's gotten cold and dusty, not your word.
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you ask the Lord for greater desire for his word?
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you ask the Lord for greater desire to know him?
SPEAKER_01: He would open your eyes to see wonderful things about himself and his word.
SPEAKER_01: Why don't you just ask him for that?
SPEAKER_01: If you're here and you don't think you're a Christian, or you know you're not a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: The message today isn't just read your Bible.
SPEAKER_01: The message today is to have a relationship with the living God through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And there'll be people up front after the service who'd love to explain that to you.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible's just a means that gets us to the end, God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: And we'd love to share that with you.
SPEAKER_01: Father, you've heard these prayers.
SPEAKER_01: Grant us our hearts' desire to know you.
SPEAKER_01: Open up our hearts more and more to your word by your spirit.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Will you stand with me?
SPEAKER_01: I'd love to see a blessing over you.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for letting me be here today.
SPEAKER_01: It's an honor to teach his word to you.
SPEAKER_01: Now may the Lord bless you and keep you.
SPEAKER_01: May you make his face shine upon you.
SPEAKER_01: May the God who delights in you may you sense and have the power to grasp his great delight for you in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And may that delight draw you to delight his word.
SPEAKER_01: In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, I bless you.
SPEAKER_01: In Jesus' name, Amen.
SPEAKER_01: God bless you guys.
SPEAKER_01: Have a great week.