Well, good morning. Last night, I was working preparing for worship this morning, and our eight-year-old daughter, Anne Claire, came up to me. We had already put him to bed, but she came up to me. She goes, Daddy, what are you doing? I had him to allow it, and I said, I'm getting ready for tomorrow. She goes, you're preaching. I go, aha, I am. And I go, what do you think? She goes, that's good. She goes, how long is it going to be? And I said, well, how long do you want it to be? No longer than 10 minutes. Really, Anne Claire? Yes. And she goes, and I like lots of stories. So maybe five minutes of stories, and then five minutes of other stuff. I said, oh, Anne Claire, there are probably a lot of people out there that they're going to be there tomorrow morning, wanting that too, but I'm sorry. I don't think it's going to be 10 minutes, but let's go before the Lord and ask that He would engage our hearts through His word, and that He would work it well in our souls. Gracious Father, we do come this morning. Thank you for this time. Thank you for this worship. How I pray that you would help me get out of the way. So that nothing would hinder the beauty of your word coming forth. Would you pierce our hearts? Would you stir in us a true delight for you? I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay. I need your advice about something. I need to know what to do about. I'm not going to tell you. Don't we all do that? Don't you have friends or people that you know, and when something comes up or you need wisdom about life or something, you go, look, I'm going to call you. I need your advice about this. I need you to tell me how to do fill in the blank. I think we all go to others like that, and at times, we're the recipients, we're the ones. I mean, obviously my position on staff and kind of my counseling background, people will come to me and say, I need your advice. What do I do on fill in the blank? Think about it. The reality is, we all are folks who are searching for advice, searching for wisdom, searching for knowledge about how to live our lives. Maybe it's a particular subject or something. We're always on the lookout and in need of answers. Think about this way. If you have a car that breaks, where do you want to go to? You want to go to the best mechanic in town, don't you? Or if you need to go to a physician, you're not going to just kind of hunt and peck in the yellow pages and pick that one. You're going to call friends and find out who is the best in town, the best specialist in town for whatever area. But what's really interesting is this, when it comes to wisdom, when it comes to seeking wisdom about life, it's almost like anything is fair game. We will go to anyone to try to find the answers that we're looking for. One of the things that Kimberly and I love to do on some of our date nights is go to Barnes and Noble, get our cappuccinos and just kind of walk the aisles. And of course, I gravitate towards the self-help books. I always want to see what's there, what the latest books are. I find them very intriguing. But what I found is this. It's a huge section of the bookstore, isn't it? Which it steps back and it tells me we're all looking for knowledge. We're all looking for instruction on how do we live our lives? Really, how do we live our lives well in this place? But there's a danger when we go to books or when we go to certain friends. And the danger is this, is the advice we're seeking, is the counsel we're looking for going to lead us toward the Lord or is it going to lead us down a path that takes us away from the Lord? A number of years ago, Kimberly and I were talking to a friend saying, we needed some help on this parenting issue. You know, we have three kids running around. It's a little wild at our house at times. And we just needed some wisdom and say, how do we bring peace and harmony to our home? Well, I don't even know who this person was, but apparently this friend gave Kimberly some advice and said, go check out this book. So she did and she brought it home and started reading and says, oh, Robert, this is what it says. She goes, if you want peace and harmony in your home, do this. Take lots of deep breaths and eat in silence. What? That's going to bring peace and harmony to my home. Well, apparently that author doesn't know my kids or my family. There is no silence in my home until we all put our heads down at night. We have to know, though, don't we? Where do we go for wisdom? Where do we go for that information that's really going to get us where we need to go? Who we turn to for advice? The Psalm that we're going to look at this morning is really the gateway to the Psalms. It's the first one and it's the preface that says, look, if you want to know how to live a happy life, a blessed life, follow this. And as you look at all of the other Psalms in a sense, it just highlights that. So it begins in this way. Look, he starts off with something that I think all of us are after. A blessedness, happy life, a good life, a satisfying life, a meaningful life, a life full of substance and worth. Isn't that what we're looking for? The word he uses here is blessed. Unfortunately, our English translation doesn't really do the Hebrew word justice. What it really means, and that means, and I think what we need to understand about that word is it means this total fulfillment, complete well-being, total happiness. Is that something that you're after? I know that I'm intrigued when I hear those things. I want to know how do I get it? That's the question that's on a lot of our minds today. How do I get a life like that? Well, this morning we're going to unlock this door of wisdom and hopefully journey through it. But as we do, we have to be aware of a few things. We've got to know what's going to lead us down that path that's ultimately going to give us what our souls so long for, a satisfying life. Well, there's three things that we're going to look at this morning as we go through and try to navigate through this path of wisdom for life. The first is this. We need to know where the dangers are. We need to know as we're pursuing wisdom and we're pursuing life what we need to stay away from. We need to know those things that can divert us off the path. The second thing we need to look at, once we see the dangers, we need to know what is it that we are to delight in then? What do we take delight in those things that are really going to satisfy us? And finally, having looked at the dangers and what to delight in, we're going to look at the results. What does it mean for us today to delight in what the Lord calls us to delight in? Let's first take a look briefly at what the dangers are, those things that can so easily trip us up along the path of life pursuing wisdom. The psalmist began saying, blessed is the man and then he gives us three negatives and he does that for a reason. He's giving us a warning sign because I think for a lot of us, our first inclination is when we're looking for advice or something, we're going to look to our own wisdom and we're going to run out to the wisdom of others seeking their instruction. And we may not be so clear or discerning who we're running after for wisdom on parenting or how to help a friendship grow or thrive or a marriage or whatever it might be. The psalmist starts out telling us there are dangers out there that we need to be aware of. Well, Kimberly and I, and our kids, we live in Memorial. We live right near the Buffalo Bio. And if you know anything about that part of town, there are a lot of beautiful old trees and shrubs and vines that grow there that just thrive there. And at first glance, many of them are very attractive, very pretty. But there's one vine in particular is pretty as it is that you've got to stay away from. There can be very dangerous. And that's poison ivy. And wouldn't you know we've got it growing in various places in our back yard. So what we tell our kids when they go outside is like, look guys, y'all can go and play with anything you want. But don't go behind the garage because that's where there's poison ivy. And don't go play on this side of the yard because you know there's a tendency for poison ivy to spring up. But look, if you stay away from those dangers, everything in between is fair game. Go and live and have fun. Because the reality is this, if our kids go behind the garage, which one of them loves to do, ultimately he's going to rub up against that poison ivy. And it's going to rub off on him. And he's going to experience the danger of it. Big wealth and itches and it won't be fun for anyone. So what we really need to look at is this. What are the dangers of living? What do we need to stay away from? The psalmist here portrays, I believe, three degrees of departure from God. And it's very very subtle. It's like a slippery slope that once we begin to walk down it, we just kind of go farther and farther away. He begins with this. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked. Here's what that means. It's really walking alongside someone who doesn't follow the Lord, who doesn't seek the Lord. It's listening to their advice. It's walking along someone and just carelessly saying, I need instruction, I need insight about this and being very careless because many of us say it doesn't matter who I go to for advice does it just as long as I get advice. The psalmist is saying, yeah, it kind of does. Watch who you listen to. And then secondly, he says, don't stand in the way of sinners. What he's saying here's, look, don't be a party to its ways. First, you find that you begin to listen to their advice and standing in the way of sinners is then accepting that advice and liking that advice. It's kind of like saying, I like playing behind the garage. It's a lot more fun. I don't mind if I rub up against that poison. I mean, it may not affect me. But when we stand in the way of sinners as he's talking about, we not only listen, but we accept the views of others and their advice often takes us away from the godly advice of others and really God's word. And then finally, the psalmist says, do not sit in the seat of scoffers. And really, this is adopting its most fatal of attitudes. We've listened to their advice. We've accepted it. And if you know anything about the ancient culture, when someone taught, they wouldn't stand, they would sit. And so you listen to the advice and you accept it and you become a proponent of it. You begin to teach that advice to others. It's subtle, but we need to know as we're following the Lord, if we really want to know how to live, we need to know who's advice to go after and what that looks like. Now, some of you may jump to the conclusion. I don't know. I hope you don't, but I imagine some might and say, all right, Robert, so what you're saying is this. We shouldn't associate with non-Christians at all, right? We should just form our little holy huddle over here and just hang out with them. No, that's not what I'm saying. And that's not what the psalmist is saying. What the psalmist is teaching us is like, we need to have wisdom. We need to be wise in whom we go to for advice that will lead us in a way that is honoring, that will draw us to the Lord. It's getting advice, not on how to fix a car, but how we live morally, how we live our lives, how we relate to one another, this side of heaven. What we need to do is this, understand God's words so well, grow in that and have a desire for that, that we would go out into the culture and influence the culture as opposed to letting the culture influence us. We give you a point of application, okay? Say you're in a dating relationship. Who do you go to for advice? Is that your office mate? So I'm dating this girl. We've been dating for a while and what advice my thought office mate say, you know what they may say? You need to move in together. I mean, come on. You need to see if you're going to be compatible. So why don't you move in together, live together for all and see if it's really going to work out? That's what the culture says, but God's words has something much difference. There's no way. Why? Because their mind fields, if you go down that path of emotional and spiritual damage, God calls us to live in safety. But if we go the other way, we will hit mind fields and it will be painful. Or take, for example, you need advice on parenting. Who do you turn to? Don't turn to that person that we turn to. The only thing that I learn from them is I do take deep breaths every now and then it is kind of helpful. But we need to know who's wisdom and advice is going to really get us what we need for life. That's going to be satisfying for our lives. Let me give one other example. Perhaps you're going through a difficulty in your marriage. Who do you call? Who do you go to? Our culture says this. Look, if it doesn't work out, just leave them. Come on. You need to be happy. There are other people out there. Leave this one. Go find another and you'll be much happier. Look, he's not going to change anyway, right? Really? God's word tells us even the most wrenches of sinners is changed. And that's you and me. When we know God's word and feet on it, we are changed. Think of the Apostle Paul, for example. He was one of the greatest proponents of killing Christians. He would have them murdered. But when he encountered Christ, the risen Savior, what happened? His life was radically changed. And he became one of the greatest champions of the gospel. We need to know where to get our wisdom for living. Where do we turn to? Well, once we've seen the dangers and the psalmist has addressed what the dangers are here, he then goes on to show us what we can really delight in, what we ought to delight in. Let me read verse two. He writes this, but his delight is in the law of the Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. A person who is really blessed, who has a life of total fulfillment, delights in the law of the Lord, and meditates upon it day and night. What is the law of the Lord? Many of us automatically go to the 10 commandments, don't we? That's kind of our default, or we'll say the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. Well, the law really means direction or instruction. And with that being so, that's the whole of scripture, the old and New Testament. And so what he's saying is, look, delight yourself in the law, the whole of scripture. And you will find life. Let me ask you this. Think about this for just a moment. What is it that you find delight in? Think about it. What is it that you find delight in? What brings you greatest pleasure, greatest joy, greatest comfort? Maybe I can ask it another way. When you're stressed out, what do you do that brings a sense of calmness to your life or peace back into your life? Is it sitting at home at night, reading a great novel? Is it going to the gym and working out? Is it taking a run? Is it sitting at home, reading the latest issue of Southern living? Is it gardening? Is it spending a good evening with a wonderful friend? Look, God has given us so many good and wonderful things to delight in. All of these are rich and good in things that we all know those things that we delight in. But would anybody say, my delight is in the law of God, my delight is really God's word. That's really at the end of the day what I delight in. Maybe what we aspire. But I think many of us will say, well, Robert, I want that. But really God's word right now to me is more of a chore. It's kind of a duty. I see it as a duty, a checkoff list that I can check off at the end of the day and then go about my day. Why do you think that is? I think it begs the question of us, how do you view God's word? How do you view it? I think there's three ways that our culture views God's word. Many of us view God's word. Have you ever been to a counselor or psychologist? But you probably know the protocol, you know, they'll hold up a card and they'll say, what's the first thing that you associate with that card? Just a split second. Tell me what that is. Well, it's like this, if I hold up the card that has the Bible, what's the first thing that comes to mind? I think many people will say today, the Bible is a book of do's and don'ts. It's just a bunch of things to not do and every now and then you find things in there to do it. What is it that gets us to see the Bible that way? I think it's this, is that we view the things that are written in the instruction of God, devoid of his love behind them. And when that happens, our heart grows cold and callous to his word and we're really not interested in engaging it or delighting in it. It's kind of like this, a parent and a child, okay? So the parent is very harsh saying, don't do this, don't do that, I told you not to do that. Do this, come on, listen. If the parent communicates with the child that way and love is not communicated with it, what's going to happen? That child is going to grow cold and his heart's going to be callous to that parent. When we view God's word as a bunch of do's and don'ts, we don't delight in it. We run from it. A second way, if I held up the Bible again, many would say it's a book of moral virtues. That's the place where you go to see how to live a good life. You know, Jesus was a great moral character. He was real and he was a very moral man. He shows us how to live. He showed us how to love. He shows us how to be kind to one another. Look, if that's all we take out of it, we're going to grow very tired and weary following those ways because there's no love communicated through that then that spurs us on to really take the light in it. Finally, some will view the book, the Bible, as a book of hope and redemption. And I hope that through this morning that you would begin to see if you struggle looking at the Bible, you would see it as a book of hope and redemption because it's understanding the Bible in this way that we truly come to delight in the Lord who has redeemed our lives from the pit. We need to know what it's all about from beginning to end. It is the most magnificent love story ever told is God's love story for us. Let me give an example, okay. Take for example the ten commandments. If we don't understand the love of God communicated through those, it is going to be a bunch of do's and don'ts, right? But think of it this way. To understand the ten commandments, you've got to understand what comes right before it. It's the preface. The preface says this, I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. And then he goes into the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. Look, it's as if God is saying this to each and every one of us. Look, my child, I am the one who brought you out of slavery out of bondage to sin so that you may be free and truly live. So when I tell you don't have any other gods before me, it's because I love you so much. And I know how destructive those things or people can be that you run to because those things and those people don't have your best in mind. My child, I do. So when I tell you do not have any other gods before me, what I'm really saying is don't have those so that you can delight in me so that we might delight in the beauty of who he is. Friends, when we see the love that's communicated, we begin to delight in it and wanting to go deeper and deeper. The ten commandments in a sense are boundary lines. They keep us in that safe area, don't they? So that we can living in that safe area, enjoy life. I was jumping on a trample in the other day and they've changed a lot since I was a kid. I'm still like to be a kid but anyway, they have this mesh net all around them now. So when you're jumping on a trample and you can do anything you want, any kind of tricks because look, if you just bounce to one side, then that's going to catch you, it's going to bring you back in the center and it's just you can have as much fun as you want in there. When I was growing up, we had a trampoline and they didn't have those sides and frankly broken arms and broken legs were a dime a dozen because there was no safety net. Do you see the point? Boundaries communicated in love are good. It is like the love of a father saying, dwell safely in here and enjoy and you can enjoy life. All right, well some of you may be saying, Robert, I hear what you're saying. I want to learn how to delight in God's word but frankly, I just don't. It's very tough for me. I don't know how to do that. What begs the question then, how do we delight in God's word? We do so by meditating upon it. That's what the Psalmist says. Look, meditating upon the word of God goes much deeper than just reading it. It's not just a textbook to be read. Meditating is making the word flesh. It's bringing light. It's seeing the life in these words that are communicated to us that increase our delight in the Lord. It's like this. It's making a principle a reality. It's saying this, that this being true, this principle being true. What does it cause me? How does it cause me to live my life? How does it enable me to view God? How should I view God? One of the things I have found so helpful over the years is something that I learned from reading Martin Luther's, the great reformer, his teaching. He asks when he reads the text. He asks himself four questions to help him meditate and engage the text. Let me tell you what those four are. First, he goes before it. He says, what is the teaching? What is this teaching? Secondly, he says, how can I adore God? Third, he says, what sins can I confess? And finally, he says, what can I ask God? Do you see? These questions, taking these questions help us engage the text to not just read it as a bunch of words on a page, but to engage it. Let me just give you a quick example looking at verse two. But his delight is in the law of the Lord. Martin Luther would sometimes just camp on one word in his devotion time. Think about this. What is that teaching? What is that teaching us? What is it teach us about who God is? It shows us that God is the God of delight. The God himself delights and wants us to also delight. Do you see that? It's making that word that the word of God very real, intangible, and practical in our lives. And so it's saying, if this is true, how then can I go and adore God? Sometimes we need to read other passages that help engage our heart to adore him. Look at the Psalms. They're a beautiful piece of prayers that we pray and we sing that help engage our hearts in adoring him. Listen to Psalm 119, verse 18, open my eyes that I may be hold wondrous things about your law. Psalm 119, verse 103, how sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Do you see when we read it like that and we know the love of a God through it, we can begin to delight. And then it's coming and saying, God, what is it that I need to confess? God, I don't delight in your word. I view it as just kind of sterile. Forgive me. Help me engage it. And maybe the Lord's going to show you something else. Maybe it's going to show you that you like that you complain, that you don't delight in anything because all of a sudden you find yourself complaining and complaining. God, forgive me that I complain. See how it engages the text and then we go with our request before him. Meditating is reading, listening to, reflecting on and then acting on the word of God. Well, how often should we do this? Well, he tells us to do it day and night. I love what the great Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon said about meditating upon the law, the law of the Lord day and night. Listen to what he said. He said, make the word of God the man of your right hand your best champion an hourly guide. Don't you love it? Let it be something that we pour over day and night. I'm not saying that you have to spend all day reading it but see the beauty and the benefit in it and begin to pour over it and let that begin to influence the way in which you live your life. And then we will then be people who influence our culture as opposed to the other way around. With that being true, we see how to delight in it. As we delight in God's word, it brings us to the results. In a sense, what does that benefit to us? There's three things just to mention briefly. First, we are nourished. Secondly, we prosper and third, we persevere. Look with me at verse three. The psalmist gives us this beautiful metaphor, a picture of a tree and he says, he is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit and season. Its leaf does not wither and all he does, he prospers. It's like a tree planted by a stream of water with its roots growing deep, deep down into the soil where it has that life source of the water. Because to the tree, the water is that source of life. The roots grow down deep and it is firm and solid. The picture here is this, it's obvious. The streams of water show forth that the word of God is that life giving agent to you and me that nourishes us and it sustains us throughout all of the seasons of life. If you know anything about trees, the one that's mentioned here is an evergreen and it bears fruit, but it doesn't bear fruit in every season, there's not a tree that really does that. So, there's going to be certain seasons where we bear fruit in others that are much more challenging, but the word of God is life to us. The word of God is a river of pardon, a river of grace, a river of promise, a river of hope, a river of constant communion with God. And you may think, all right Robert, how so? Look, we know it's true because the words written in the Bible aren't just a bunch of words in a book. There are words that are there that become life to us. God's word becomes life to us and nourishes us. I love what John in his gospel writes, how he begins it in the first chapter, somewhat through on verse 14, he writes this, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Do you see how beautiful it is? The word became life and dwelt, became flesh and dwelt among us. It is Christ that we see that we can hold, that is tangible, that we seek our feet into, that becomes life to us. He makes the word become alive, to where he is the source of life to us. But then if you read later on in John's gospel, he hits a number of miracles that Jesus does. And in John chapter 6, we see the miracle of Jesus feeding the 5,000, giving them the fish and the bread. It's a beautiful picture. And all of a sudden after he's done it, he goes off to kind of retreat for a while. And those folks who are all left behind, well some of them go to find him. They want to get more bread. So they do actually find him and they ask him for more and listen to Jesus' response. It is fantastic. He said this, truly, truly I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that parishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the son of man will give you. Then he goes on and says this, truly, truly I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And you know what they said? It's awesome. They're getting it and they say, sir, give us this bread today. No, always. Sir, give us this bread. If that is life, give it to us always. And Jesus says this, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall not thirst. Do you see how the word of God is that life giving agent to our souls? We cannot live outside of that. We will not live outside of that, but it is feeding on only when we run to the one who has given his life for us and feed upon him. Do we really live? Do we really begin to experience the fruitfulness of a life of sense of total completeness? Then he says that we prosper. Let me ask you this question. When you read this, do you think, do you automatically turn to external prosperity? What does this almost mean when he says that we prosper? Does he mean that if you meditate on God's word, your business is going to profit and you'll see big, big rewards? Does he mean that you're going to always have a life filled with good health? No. What he's talking about here is not external prosperity, but soul prosperity. That is, we feed and meditate upon the word of God as we are nourished by him. We have soul prosperity. It's the reality of this. We are going to go through great trials in life, times of suffering, times of sadness, times of sorrow. I think God he mentioned in our church this week, we've gone through a lot of hardships. There's a lot of weeping and mourning and sadness and sickness here, but we prosper because the word of God enables us to persevere in the midst of those storms that rain down upon our lives. The greatest comforting words come from Paul and Romans chapter 5 when he talks about suffering. He says, look, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. Hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured forth into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us. That is the hope. That is how we prosper. It's by digging our roots deep into the word of God and knowing that it is so satisfying. The song I sang the other day was it is well with my soul when the rivers of life pound down upon us, when the heat and the sun and the hail rain down, it is tough, but God's word satisfies. And in the end, we persevere. Throughout this song, you'll see a contrast of the righteous man and the wicked man, the man who follows the Lord and the man who turns from the Lord. The way of the one who turns for the Lord, his destiny is this, verse 4, the wicked are not so, they're like chaff that the wind drives away, chaff, when you have wheat and it's threshed on the floor, the chaff just falls up in the air and is tossed and blown by the wind, signifying, look, if we don't follow the word Lord, that's what our life is going to be like. It's going to be meaningless. We have nothing to sink our feet down into. But he says, not so the righteous, they will stand. The beauty is this. When the righteous stand, it is not our own righteousness. It's not because I have taken the law of God and followed it perfectly. The righteousness in which we stand is the righteousness of our Savior. It points us back to the cross and that great exchange where the sinless, thoughtless man who kept the law perfectly gave of himself, took on our sin, our shame on the cross, giving us in its place his complete full righteousness. And so that in the day of judgment we stand, there is a hope that we have because of what our Savior has done for us. Look, if you want to know the way of wisdom, the key to life, the blessed life of total fulfillment, it's not about outward prosperity. It's delighting ourselves in the law and the truth, founding God's word. It's feeding upon them. It's meditating upon them. And whatever season you're in, whether it's a season of joy or a season of sorrow, because we know that God's word stands. And as we feed on it, we see that it is satisfying food for our soul and through it, we live. Friends, that's life. Feeding upon our Savior who gave his life for us. Let's pray. Gracious God, we love you. We adore you. We thank you that you are the bread of life, that you feed us and nourish us. Would you so strengthen us now as we come before your table? Amen.