Like A Tree,

All right, well, I get the great opportunity to introduce the Pastor professor preacher of God's word to us this morning, Dr. Mark Fattato. It is a great opportunity for us He is the academic dean at Reform Theological Seminary. He is a professor at RTS He was part of the new living translation. He's the master of Hebrew, a lover of motorcycles He's an incredible preacher and so it's a great opportunity for us to hear from him. But as he comes, let me pray that God would illumine our hearts. So pray with me. Lord God, we thank you so much that you have given us the opportunity to hear from your word this morning and we pray that Lord you would tell our hearts that they would be soft, that they would be receptive, that we would have ears to hear and hearts to understand and apply your word this morning. So spirit come and teach us. Speak through Dr. Fattato to us this morning that we may be transformed. It's your name we pray. Amen. Thank you. Thank you, Daniel. Well, it's a delight to be here. Beautiful Sunday morning. I did see more motorcycles yesterday than I have seen in a long time. A friend of mine, who's an elder at the PCA congregation in winter spring. He's an elder there. We took a ride up to Leesburg and went to the Leesburg Bike Festival and I saw thousands of motorcycles of all shapes and sizes. It was a great day. Somebody came in on a bike today. You did. What do you ride? I'm a cruiser kind of guy. But when you get my age maybe you will. I can't do this very long. My kids do that. But it's a delight to be here with you this morning and I always enjoy an opportunity to preach and to get to know another congregation. It's nice to see some familiar faces and nice to make some new acquaintances. This morning we're going to look at Psalm 1. So if you have a Bible with you it turned to Psalm 1. We're not going to look at the whole of the Psalm. We're just going to look at one particular picture. But let me start with a question. The second commandment. Does the second commandment prohibit the use of all images? All images of God for example. Are we allowed to make any images of God? Anybody know? Anybody know what it says? You shall not make for yourself what kind of image? A grave in image. That's exactly right. We're not allowed to make images of God out of wood and out of stone in order to bow down and worship them. But the Bible is full of images of God that are made out of what? That are made out of words. Somebody tell me from the book of Psalms what is probably the best-known picture of God. The Lord is my shepherd. God uses pictures to teach us a lot about who he is. The name of the Lord is a high tower. The righteous run to it and they are safe. God is my refuge and my strength and every present help in time of need. The Lord God is sun and shield. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk up rightly. The Bible is full of images of who God is. But not only that God not only teaches us about what he is like through images. He also teaches us what he wants us to be like. What do you want your life to look like this morning? Well, I have a hunch that since you're here and not somewhere else and you all could be somewhere else right now true or true. You could be somewhere else but you're not. You've chosen to be here and so I'm guessing that one of the things that's true about what you want your life to be like is that you want your life what God wants your life to be like. So let's look at Psalm 1 because God gives you a picture of what he would like your life to be like and I'm going to read that Psalm from the new international version. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does, prosper is not so the wicked. They are like chaff 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 will perish. Somebody tell me in one word what does God want your life to be like today? One word, tree. This is a Presbyterian church is it not? I can tell you're not Episcopalians because when I preach to Episcopalians believe it or not they do they talk to me a lot. Now for me to be able to preach I've got to you've got to be able to talk to me. So let's try that all over again. In one word, tell me what God wants your life to be like. Tree very good now you're Episcopalians. God wants you to be like a tree. Now this image like a tree is really a complex image. It's not complicated but it's complex simply meaning that there are a number of dimensions to this picture. So how many of us can do four words this morning? Four words? Four words. Thank you. I see that hand back there. Well, we're going to do four words and in these four words we're going to capture what God wants what God means when he says he wants your life to be like a tree. Now the first word is life. Everybody say life. So you've got to repeat these things so that by the time you leave you leave remembering what it is that God wants you to be like when he says he wants you to be like a tree very good. Okay, so the first word is life. When we when we enter the how many books of Moses do we call them? No hints. The five books of Moses when we enter the five books of Moses in chapter two of Genesis we're in the Garden of Eden and in the middle of the garden there are a couple of what? There are a couple of trees. As soon as we enter the Garden of Eden there are a couple of trees and one of those trees is called the tree of it's called the tree of life. Now we're not totally sure but in all likelihood in the beginning Adam and Eve didn't eat from that tree. We are going to eat from it when we get to heaven finally but it was there in the middle of the Garden because God wanted to communicate to Adam and Eve every day as they were walking through the Garden. He wanted to remind them through this picture in the middle of the Garden of exactly why he created them and somebody tell me with one word that starts with L why God created Adam and Eve. For what? He created them for life. God's original creation will design for you is that you have life. A life that is an abundant life. A life that is a holy life. A life that is a happy life. Life in all of its fullness that's why you were created. When our children were small we used the children's catechism with them you know who made you. Anybody know the answer in one word? God what else did God make? All things. Why did God make you and all things? For his own glory. How can you glorify God by loving him and keeping his commandments? Parents with young children. Great way to teach your kids the fundamentals. If they are two and they can say God they're ready to start to learn the catechism. Very easy. Well our second son was about two and we ask him one question. In what a state did God create our first parents and he said I don't know. Was it Maryland? He didn't quite get the difference between state and a state. And where were we living at the time? We were living in Maryland. No that's he didn't know he didn't create the in what condition did God create our first parents. He made them happy and he made them holy. Happy and holy. That's why God created you. What happened to our first parents after they rebelled against God instead of being happy and holy. They became what's the S word sinful and starts with them miserable. They became sinful and miserable. Here's the point. God didn't create you for sin and misery. God created you for happiness and for holiness and the tree is a reminder of why God what does he want you to be like? He created you for life a happy life and a holy life. Why did Jesus come to redeem you? Did he come to redeem you so that you could sin more and be more miserable as a result? No. He did not come to harm you to kill you to destroy you. John chapter 10 he came that you might have life in all of it and an abundant life is simply an abundance of holiness that creates an abundance of happiness. How holy were you in the garden before the fall? Perfectly. How happy were you? Perfectly happy. In heaven how holy are you going to be? Perfectly how happier are you going to be? And now here we live in between the two worlds right now. How many of you want to be more holy? How many of you want to be more happy? We all do why? I know why it's because it's the way God created us. He has wired you to be holy. He has wired you to be happy. Those go together and there's tension in our lives when we are not holy and when we are not therefore truly biblically happy. What's the first L word? What does God want you to be like when He says He wants you to be like a tree? He wants you to be characterized by life. Okay ready for the second word? Notice that it says that this tree is planted. The second word is endurance. Everybody say endurance? God wants you to be like a tree and first of all a tree is characterized by life and in the second place the tree is characterized by endurance. That's exactly right endurance. The winds of adversity may blow. How many of us can control whether or not a hurricane comes this way this summer? Who can control whether or not the tornado pops up in Texas or in the Midwest? The winds of adversity may blow. Whether those are physical adversities or emotional adversities or relational adversities or financial adversities the winds of adversity may blow. Now let's get rid of the hurricane winds and the tornado winds just ordinary winds. You know 20 mile an hour, 15 mile an hour winds. When the winds blow does the tree bend? Does it move? But what does it do? It doesn't fall over. What about chaff? By the way if the tree is life, is chaff alive? No. What happens when the wind blows on the chaff? It blows away. God wants you to be like a tree which means he wants you to have life and endurance. God wants, how many of you need some endurance right now this morning in some area of life? Okay. How many of you wouldn't admit it or wouldn't raise your hand because you're real Presbyterians? And we don't raise our hands in church. I'll bet every one of us needs some level of endurance and some maybe just need some small endurance right now. Maybe some of us need mega endurance. Maybe some of us find ourselves in a relationship right now where we're wondering whether we want to stay. That's really possible. Maybe some of you are wondering this morning whether or not you want to stay in the faith. I see I presume that because you're here you want to be like God but I don't presume that none of us are really struggling with very profound issues. In fact I presume some of us are. When I was converted, God gave me a wonderful gift. He gave me the gift of the assurance of salvation. I never struggled with, you know, am I a Christian? Am I not a Christian? And what was odd is that's the tradition that I grew up in. I didn't grow up as a Reformed and Presbyterian kind of guy. I grew up in the tradition where you could be saved one day and then not saved the next day and then you could be saved again the next day and not saved again. I mean I grew up with with this kind of emotion in terms of whether or not you belong to God because it in some ways I was taught that it depended on me and if it depends on me, no wonder it's going to be up and down. But at any rate in spite of that, God gave me the gift of the assurance of salvation. But my family when we lived in Southern California between 88 and 99, starting in 1999, we went through severe adversity. I mean the winds were blowing like hurricane winds all through our lives. I remember standing on the beach just north of the peer at ocean side, California, looking out over that vast ocean, saying to my wife, I'm not sure how God can even exist. Let alone be good and our family be in the circumstances that we are in. I was ready to throw in the towel and give up the faith altogether. So I know that it's possible for people who are believers to doubt and not just to doubt a little bit but that seriously. Maybe some of you have been dealing with some physical things in your life and maybe you've just come to the point of throwing in the towel and just saying, I give up, I'm stuck with it. Where do you need to hold on? I had church this morning as I was coming down. I love gospel music and among other things I was listening to one of my favorite reformed theologians, Whitney Houston. And the CD from the preacher's wife is just Whitney Houston and the Georgia Mass choir, just great stuff. There's one song on there. Hold on, help is on the way. And when we were in California and I'm not exaggerating, I listened to that song daily and God kept me going through Whitney Houston's music. I am deeply indebted to her because of how God used her in my life. Hold on, help is on the way. He may not be there when you want him to but he will be there right on time. So where do you need to hold on today? God is saying to you, I want you to be like a tree and you can hold on. You don't have to give up on that relationship. You don't have to give up on that hope for healing. You don't have to give up on that hope for emotional stability. You don't have to give up on hope for getting out of that financial situation you're in. God says you can be like a tree, a tree that is characterized by life and that endures. Now the question comes, if you're going to have this teaming life, if you're going to endure even when the winds of adversity are going to blow, it's going to take the third word, the third word is resources. Notice that the tree is not only planted endurance but it's planted by streams of water and so the tree is tapped into some very profound resources and so if you're going to have endurance, if you're going to be teaming with life, you've got to be tapped into these resources. What are they? There's two of them. The first one and the most obvious one in the text. If you're the tree, what's the tree drinking from? It's drinking from the stream of water but if you're the psalmist, what's the psalmist in this psalm drinking from? What's he drinking from? Okay, little hint. What's he meditating on? The word of God. See, the stream is a picture of the word of God. The reason why the tree is characterized by life and the reason why the tree can endure when the winds blow is because it's rooted in the word of God. It's drinking from the word of God. And of course, that's something that I know you're interested in or you wouldn't be here. You'd be somewhere else but you're interested and I commend you for that and I encourage you to make regular use of the word of God. The public word of God is it's taught here Sunday by Sunday. I trust that you come to hear Scott but more than that and I know he agrees with me. I trust that you come to hear whom? That you come to hear God speaking through his enlisted servant and God will come and he will meet you in his word. When I was a pastor, I used to be amazed at times. Somebody would come up to me afterward and they would say, what you said just encouraged me so much and I would say, well, what was it? And they would say it was you know, D and I would say, I didn't even plan on saying that. God has this way of, I don't know what your needs are. Scott doesn't know the deep details of your lives often but God does and he has the power to take the word and to apply it to your lives to give you that staying power, that encouragement, that hope that you need for a better tomorrow. But I've already alluded to something. It's not just the word of God. See, as PCA people, we follow in some ways and in many ways but not in all ways the teaching of John, Calvin, we are Calvinists and Calvin said it's not just the word of God that we need to be tapped into. It's not only the word of God, it is also the spirit of God and what God has joined together, let us not separate. There are probably some Christians this morning who are sitting in church saying subconsciously, we're the really good Christians because we've got all of our doctrine straight. We've got our confessions and our catechisms and we know exactly what we believe. Those other Christians over there, it's just a bunch of emotion. There are some Christians over here in church subconsciously saying, we're the really good Christians because they're just a bunch of egghead Christians. We've got the, we've got the spirit. Calvin says you've got to have the word of God and the spirit of God and the stream is not only a picture of the word, the stream is also a picture of the spirit. Psalm 46 says there is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, which is Jerusalem. Now there's a problem here, what's the problem, what doesn't Jerusalem have? If you know your geography, there's no river in Jerusalem and so how can there be a river whose streams are making glad the city of Jerusalem? It's a, it's a figurative river and the, the poet tells us what he means by that in the next verse when he says, God is within her. God will help her at break of day. The picture of the river is a picture of God flowing into your life, taking the word of God, giving you the endurance, filling you with the life that you need, no matter what the adversities are, that you may be facing now or may be facing tomorrow or in the coming week. God wants you to be like a tree and a tree is characterized by life and sometimes that means we have to have endurance and in order to have endurance and to be have this abundant life, we've got to be tapped into two resources and the first one is the word of God and the second one is the spirit of God, fourth word, fourth word is significance. How many of you at the age of 106 when you finally pass from this life want to have on your tombstone? Her life was good for nothing. None of you do and I know why you're not wired that way. You were created to live a life of significance. You have been redeemed by Christ so that you can live a life of significance. You'll notice that this tree is not only planted by streams of water but it's producing what? It's good for it's good for something. It's not good for nothing. You want to be like a tree, don't you? None of you want to get up in the morning and face a day saying it doesn't matter at all whether I'm here or not. There's a book, a Christian book that has sold millions and millions and millions of copies. It's called a driven life. Why did that book sell so many copies? What is our culture hungering for purpose and why are we hungering for it because we were created to have it. We were created to experience it but when we broke our relationship with God we gave up a true life of significance and you want to have a life that makes a difference. Now as Presbyterians we know that our universal purpose in life is to glorify God and enjoy Him, glorify God and enjoy Him both of those things. I don't want to take the time to develop that but in starting to wrap up talk about something a little bit different. Not our universal purpose but your individual purpose. Not why are we here but why are you here? Why are you here as opposed to the person sitting beside you and the biblical truth is you're here for a reason as our pastor tells us frequently if God didn't still have something for us to do here we wouldn't be here and the fact that we are still here means that there's something for us to do and that's not only true of us as a church it's true of you as an individual. If there were no reason for you to be here wouldn't God just take you home isn't that better? If it's better for you to be in the presence of God right now why aren't you there? It must be because God has some good purpose for you as an individual. How many of you have had parents? How many of your parents have made mistakes in how they have raised you? I see a lot of young hands going up already and parents they don't even know yet how many mistakes have been made on them. Our first born is 23 and we have said to him so many times will we are so sorry you were our first we had no clue what we were doing when when you came into our lives. We made all of our mistakes on you can you please forgive us? Guess what? My parents made mistakes and I still feel some of those. I've made mistakes my kids feel those mistakes that I've made but in the words of another one of my favorite reformed theologians Barbara Streisand from her CD higher ground there are no mistakes. If God is really sovereign then ultimately there are no mistakes only lessons to be learned and guess what? Regardless of how much it might still hurt those mistakes that your parents made was God out of control. God was using all of those mistakes to shape you into just the person that you are right now so that you can do right now what nobody else in the world can do you're all unique your life's experiences your personality your brain your IQ your physical appearance everything about you is okay how do I know it's okay because if God wanted it to be different what would it be so in some sense we have got to start to say I'm okay with the way I am right now does that mean I don't want to change does God want you to change yes but has just stop and think about it he has justified us in a second right but sanctification is a work of God's grace and it takes place over did it have to couldn't God have made us perfect all at once but he didn't did he he chose to make us perfect over time he must be okay with us becoming perfect through a process and if he's okay with it who else can get okay with it we can and once you start to get okay with the fact that you're okay going through the process then you can get okay with the fact that other people are okay as well the point is right where you are right now right how just as you're sitting right now you are very special with a unique purpose I'm going to tell you a story and then go to the conclusion when we first moved to California sorry this is Florida right I was talking to a Californian this morning when we first moved to Florida we went to the Bob Car Theatre listened to four pieces of music two by Gershwin and two by Ravel now this is not my music my music is the blues but at any rate we listened two by Gershwin two by Ravel because they had some mutual influence on each other we went early to listen to the conductor explain why he was doing the four pieces that he was doing and he said in in telling us that he told us that at one point Gershwin famous American composer went to Ravel French composer and said teach me to compose the way you compose and with a stroke of genius Ravel said to him why would you ever want to be a second rate Ravel when you can be a first rate Gershwin now get honest for a moment how much time do you spend focusing on what you are not if only I were like her if only I could do this if only I could we spend tons of emotional energy and time focusing on what we are not it's no wonder then that we wonder what our true significance is how about if we how about if we spent that same amount of time focusing on all that God has made us to be right now and focusing on how we can use who we are right now for his honor and our enjoyment do you think it would make a difference in your life I know it would I'd just give you one more personal illustration of that I wrote out to the bike fest yesterday and the beautiful motorcycles and the number of beautiful motorcycles of all shapes and sizes and this won't mean much to you unless you ride motorcycles but I ride a Kawasaki Vulcan 750 and what that means is that there are about half a dozen motorcycles that were written up about ones that haven't changed over 20 years of production mine was number one I mean it's just it's just an old small engine and you know when I was there I had a choice to make right I could say man look at what my bike is what's the end word look at what my bike is not but you know what I did I started to think that way as I was riding home I said wow I own a I own a motorcycle and my face is in the wind unless you ride you don't understand that but it's true my face is in the wind it's a choice that we have to make every moment of every day you have the choice to focus on what you are not and you will not have any sense of purpose or significance or you can be like a tree and you can see where it is that you are bearing fruit and you can celebrate that one more story and then I'll conclude my IT guy he rides a real motorcycle he rides a big Harley and he's a very he's an evangelist he's been trying to convert me to Harley's and but at any rate he wrote he wrote up to an intersection a couple of weeks ago and there was a man who was about 80 years old on a small like Vespascooter and this 80 year old man looked over at him and he said son when I grow up I'm going to get me a big motorcycle like yours and Tom just looked at him and he said it doesn't matter as long as your face is in the wind may God give us grace to understand may God give you grace to be the best you that you can be because you can be no other now let me now let me conclude conclude how many of you would like to be like a tree full of life endurance tapped into the resources living a life of significance it's easy just look at the first couple of verses all you have to do is never take the wrong advice never do the wrong thing and never have a bad attitude and this life is yours now isn't that an encouraging note to end on see I'll just conclude by saying that before this psalm is a picture of your life it's a picture of the life of Christ was Christ ever tempted to do the wrong thing was he ever given the wrong advice that he ever take the wrong advice did he ever develop a bad attitude toward his father's will no see Christ has lived Psalm one perfectly for you and now what's he doing he's producing it in you so that more and more you are becoming like this tree how many of you are there perfectly how many of you are there in part you have some life yes you have some endurance yes some tapping into the resources yes some sense of significance yes you're already there but you're not there fully but Christ is in the process of making you more and more like a tree that is characterized by life endurance resources let's pray father thank you for your word which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path holy spirit we pray that you would take this word and apply it to each one of our hearts exactly where we need it and only you do we pray that you would encourage us that our walk with you might deepen and that our service of you might deepen as well we pray in Jesus name amen