Highlights: Psalm 119 - Week 4

Amen, Amen, and amen, somebody give the Lord of big old hands

clap. Come on, come on, come on, come on, come

on. Amen. So good to see everybody this morning on holiday weekend.

You know what, actually not a holiday weekend. I don't think it's a

holiday weekend if the holiday doesn't connect to the weekend. But this is a

big one, so we'll give it to you. Amen. We're gonna keep

going in our series Psalm one, nineteen highlights. Today we're gonna start in

verse fifty seven. Psalm one nineteen, verse fifty seven. I'm gonna go

fast, So get a pen and a paper. Get ready to write and

take notes because we're gonna go fast so I can get y'all to y'all's barbecue.

Come on, somebody listen. I know some of y'all wait to eat

some pork or some steak or some fisher. I don't know. Some of

y'all probably vegan maybe a piece of tofu on the grill. Don't ever walk

up to me and say, man, I had the most beautiful grill tofu.

Don't even do that. Psalm one, nineteen, verse fifty seven.

It says you are my portion. Oh Lord, you know we could preach

right there all day that He is our portion portion of what everything, my

portion of peace, my portion of provision everything. I have said that I

would keep your words. I entreated your favor with my whole heart. Be

merciful to me according to your word. Let me stop right there, he

says. I want you to notice what the Psalmist does here. The Psalmist

leverages God's character in what he just said. He said, Lord, be

merciful to me, but do it according to your word. Because you've made

some promises in your word, and I've heard a rumor that you cannot lie.

I've heard a rumor that you have to do what's in your word.

And I want you to show me mercy according to your word, because if

it's in your word, it has to be. When you pray, remind

God of his word. That's why it's powerful to pray scripture over your situation

and your circumstance, because so many time, so many times, we don't

realize that our faith is a byproduct of hope. Hope comes first, and

then faith is energized by our hope, and our hope is in God's word.

We have reduced that word to something that it's not. I hope you

feel better. I hope you have a nice day. I hope you get

a job. I hope this. I hope that. But that's just wishful

thinking if it's not grounded in something solid and something that has to come to

pass. Come on, somebody. I don't hope you feel better. My

hope is in the fact that he is the Son of Righteousness, rising with

healing in his wings. My hope is in the fact that by his stripes

I was healed two thousand years ago. My hope is not in that you

get a job. My hope is in the fact that he is Jehovah Gyrah,

my provider. See that. My hope is in that. And that's

why I pray his word and remind him that I know his word, and

I remind the enemy that I know his word. Come on, somebody,

so there's no confusion there. And then God acts upon his word, because

whatever proceeds out of the mouth of God will not return. BOYD, that's

free. That's not even part of the message today. I entreated you.

I entreated your favor with my whole heart. Be merciful to me according to

your word. I thought about my ways. I thought about my ways.

I took an inventory, not about you, God, but about me.

I studied. I studied my actions. I studied the way I do things,

the way I respond to things. I studied my behaviors. I studied

where I spend time and where I don't spend time. I studied how I

interact with people. I studied my ways. I evaluate. I did some

self evaluation. You know that the key to living holiness is starting with self

evaluation. Scripture is our roadmap towards holiness and power and those things. But

you can't get where you're going unless you know two things. Unless you know

where you're going and where you're starting from. Come on, somebody, you

got to know the point of origin. And you only do that if you

study your ways, and you know your ways, and you come to a

realization that you have that pigpen moment that we talk about with that prodigal son,

where he's feeding scraps to the swine. He's in the pigpen, he

sees them eating, and it says not that he came to God. It

says that he came to himself and realized where he was is not where God

wanted him to be so, he says, Listen, I've searched my ways.

I looked at what I was doing, my behaviors, and as a

result, I thought about my ways and turned my feet to your testimonies.

Now watch, I want to give you a repentance. It's a big spiritual

word that we throw around a lot of times, but we don't always know

what that means. You know, how many of you know that sometimes we

throw out spiritual words that the Church is used for a long long time,

but we have no clue what it means. Grace that's another one that,

oh, by God's grace, by God's grace, but we don't know what

grace means. We know we want it because it's good, because the Bible

talks about it, right, but we don't know what it means. Literally.

Grace can just be explained by the fact that God is leaning in towards

humanity. His momentum is already moving towards us so that he can catch us

before we fall. Grace, repentance, he says, Listen, I studied

my ways, and I realized that my ways, my feet, they were

not pointed in the direction of your testimony. They were not pointed in the

direction of you. So I stopped and I changed course. Repentance literally means

that I realized I was going in the wrong direction, and I stopped,

and I just did my course back towards God. Now we think repentance is,

and now listen, I don't want you to I don't want you to

lift your hand. But a lot of people think repentance is I just say

God forgive me. But that's not repentance. Repentance is when I do something

about the fact that I have grieved God, that I've done something contrary to

his principles. Right, And now I've stopped and I've done something to move

in the other direction. So you struggle. Every time you open the computer,

you somehow navigate to things you shouldn't navigate to. And God, I'm

sorry, God, I didn't mean to do that. Yeah you did.

You clicked it. You're a clicker. Listen, I just want you to

think about that. Don't go to hell for clicking. It's not repentance until

you take the computer and you move it into the most public space in your

home so that anybody can see what you're looking at. And then maybe the

fear of whoever you live with coupled with the fear of God, will keep

you from walking down those avenues. That's repentance is when you adjust the atmosphere

that sin is easily perpetrated in. But we're we're gonna, We're gonna get

there home. I made haste and did not delay to keep your commandments.

The chords of the wicked have bound me, but I have not forgotten your

law. The chords of the wicked have bound me. In other words,

there's some principles that are happening in the world, and they have wrapped themselves

around me. And it is my natural inclination now to move in that direction.

Because the cords of the wicked have bound me. We have to get

free from those cords of the wicked in order to live a righteous, holy

life. And that should be our desire, is a righteous holy life,

because if you seek first the kingdom of God. And what is the kingdom

of God, it's his holiness. If you seek first the Kingdom of God,

his righteousness, all these things, what things, those things that you

want in your life, but holiness, the pursuit of holiness comes first,

and then God adds those things to your life because then he can trust that

those things won't have you. It's okay if you have things, as long

as things don't have you. And he says, these chords have bound me.

But you know, I was reading that, and the Holy Spirit spoke

to my heart, and I honestly didn't even know where it was. How

many of you you've read something in scripture, but you just forget where it

is. So I went on this pursuit of trying to find it because that

word cord just kind of, I don't know, it just kind of stuck

in my mind, and it led me over to Numbers, Chapter fifteen.

Numbers, Chapter fifteen, verse thirty seven. It says again the Lord spoke

to Moses, saying, speak to the children of Israel, tell them to

make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put

a blue thread in the tassle of the corners. And you shall have the

tassle, that you may look upon it and remember all the commandments of the

Lord and to do them, and that you may not follow the harlotry to

which your own heart and your own eye are inclined, And that you may

remember and do all my commandments and be holy for your God. He says,

literally, wrap a string around it so that you can remember to do

the right thing. Put a string, put a chord in the tassel,

so that you know to do the right thing those things that you're struggling with.

Tious Listen, if you if you know you watch twenty two hours of

television every day and you spend twenty two seconds with God, type his string

around your remote, so when you pick it up and you see that string,

it will remind you of the commands of God to put him first.

Listen. If you're like me and you love food, come on, somebody.

I know my struggle. I pass it in the mirror every day.

Get you a piece of string and tied around a refrigerator handle. Come on,

somebody, so that when you reach up there and grab it, that

strings there, you're like, oh, nope, I Lord, I'm not

I'm not starving. So I'm going to I'm going to withhold and I'm going

to turn towards your testimonies of not over indulging even in food. Come on,

somebody, if if if you can't wait, if you hear something,

if you if you were on any prayer team, prayer chain, and the

only reason you're there is to be the first one to get the info.

Scoop. Come on, somebody, so that you can grab that phone and

you can start gossiping. You need to tie string around your telephone to remind

you not to tell other people's business. Amen, listen, we must letty

is moally because at the rate at which society is normalizing not just marginal sin

but complete depravity. I'm not I don't think you're going to fall off the

cliff tomorrow and dive headlong into depravity. That's not what I'm worried about.

But as it becomes normalized more and more, it moves the needle so that

you feel like you can get away with a little more. Come on,

somebody, you feel like you can do just a little more. Because I'm

not as bad as them. I'm not as bad as I'm not as bad

as all those people on Twitter, I hope not. Listen. I can

open Twitter and within thirty seconds see two hundred people murdered. It's crazy,

I hope not. But then I start saying, well, I'm not murdering

anybody, so getting two double quarter pounders with cheese agle hurt nothing. Well,

I mean I ain't as bad Ernie. Don't do anything bad. I'm

gonna use him for an exactly I'm not as bad as Ernie in that,

so I can do just a little bit more over. Here, come on,

somebody, And it's a slow slide, a slow fade into sin,

because our standard, our baseline, is not God's word. It's the actions

of fallen, broken humanity. And I can compare the best part of my

life life to the worst part of anybody in here, and I can come

out as a shining example. Amen. And then that same person can compare

the best part of their life to the worst part of my life, and

think, how in the world can he even get up and preach? Because

our measure is not there. Our measure is the word of God, and

grace is there when we miss the mark, but not when we purposely start

sliding down the mountain, because we don't think about where our feet are pointed,

and when we do realize it, we don't make a course correction.

And he said, listen, I want you to all I want you to

alter the things you wear in order to remind you of the principles of God,

because the principles of God must be our guiding light in a world that's

getting increasingly dark. Proverbs, chapter seven, verse two. It says,

obey my commands and live god kind of life, life full of purpose,

full of peace, joy. Obey my commands and live. Guard my instructions

as you guard your own eyes. Tie them on your fingers as a reminder,

right them deep in your heart. Do something surface level so it moves

past the surface and deep down into your heart. Train yourself to do the

right thing, is literally what it's saying. Discipleship is not about you getting

more information. It's about doing something with the information you already have. Let

me say that again. Someone need to tweet that disciple. It'll be a

good murder break up. Discipleship is not about gaining more information. It's doing

something with the information you already have. He says, tie it around your

finger so that it eventually gets into your heart. When when I was growing

up, we we we rescued this um, this abused dog named Simon.

He was a miniature snouser. When we got him. He was scared of

people and my father, my father in law, about my father in law,

my stepdad. My father in law never met Simon. My stepdad just

loved this dog for some reason. He just this was like the object of

his affection. And he worked with that dog, and he loved that dog

every day, and and and he would he taught it that it couldn't eat

until you said okay. It was a great trick, right. People would

come over to the house. He'd say, watch this. He'd throw a

piece of food downis heigh okay. But the way he did that is,

over the course of time, he modified the dog's behavior. He would put

the food down, and Sione would start to eat it, and he would

reach down. He would take the bone, he say no, and slide

it away okay, And he would slide it back under the dog's nose and

let the dog eat, and over the process of time, continually keeping it

in front of him. Never one time was that dog ever fed that that

didn't happen. He continually kept it in front of that dog, modifying the

dog's behavior. One day Kyle called and said, hey, feed the dog.

I was on my way out the door. I was in a hurry,

so I poured the food in the bowl and I left. I came

back about four hours later, and poor Simon was sitting over that bowl.

He was just shaken looking at it. I forgot to tell him okay,

so I walked in. I was like, oh, I said okay,

and he just rong. Are you to the place in the Kingdom of God

where the the enemy puts something in front of you? If God doesn't say

okay, you don't partake because it takes you wrapping that principle around your finger

so you can see it until it drops in your heart, which means it

has to bypass your mind, because your mind is the filter of your heart.

And if you train your mind on what goes into your heart, you

are well on the way to righteous holy living. But it starts with getting

free from the things that the world has wrapped you around or wrapped you with

that says those things are okay, Those things are permissible because they're not as

bad ass, And we just can and we continue to chase after God.

You know what, the band can go ahead and come get ready. In

Luke chapter six, verse forty five, it says a good man, out

of the good measure his heart brings forth good. I want to remind you

what we just established that we started over in Psalm one nineteen, and we

have tracked this path through our modification towards holy living and upright hardness. So

we are physically putting things in place that allow our heart to be clean and

full of God. A good man, out of the good treasure of his

heart, brings forth good. Now it doesn't mean it uses that word a

good man on purpose. It doesn't mean that a good man just simply does

good, but that he has become good. He's trained him self to be

good. He has put in the effort to tear away the threads of sin

and the threads of the world and tie the blue cord in the tassles of

his life. So it reminds him of the principles of God God. And

it says, a good man out of the Bunnifa's heart does good, and

an evil man out of the evil treasure of his life. He calls that

thing. He calls that evil treasure because at some point you put value on

it, or it would have never gotten into your heart. Treasure is valuable.

And he said, even when it's evil, it's still treasure in your

life. Because what's in our heart are the things that we value. What

do you value? I know this is hard for a holiday weekend. An

evil man, out of the evil treasure of his heart, brings forth evil.

Let me let me show you something. How many of you have ever

heard the saying hurt people, hurt people, abuser's abuse, I mean the

abused abuse. I mean we've heard those things, right. And the reason

those things are true is apart from the grace of God and the washing of

his blood. Those things are true and remain true because they've been taught to

do those things. They've been taught those things, and those things drop into

the heart, and evil produces evil. Good produces good. Now that's not

an excuse, because we all need to be born again and wash clean and

be on the discipleship process. But these things we see in the natural world

prove out these scriptural principles. For out of the abundance of the heart,

his mouth speaks. For out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth

speaks. What's in your heart comes out of your mouth. I was was

it a helicopter going to Jacksonville one time with us past when we were going

to buy television time We got into the airspace of Jacksonville International Airport, And

I don't know if it was an Army, Navy. I don't know who

it was, but we could see the fighter jets they were practicing, but

they were practicing landing on aircraft carriers, so they were just coming down,

hitting the ground, and then they would take back off and circle and do

it again. I remember so vividly that our pilot mark he called it,

and he requested clearance to come through airspace, and they told us to go

around the east side of the airspace. So we start going around the east

side. And you never want to hear this because I'm listening. I've got

the headset so I can hear what the tier's saying back to is right.

And our air traffic controller comes on and he says, when you hear that,

that's bad when you're in the air, right, he says, and

I don't remember the tail number, but he says, uh, helicopter November

Charlie X Ray whatever it was. Bank laughed just in that tone. So

I looked right because if we were going left, obviously that's where the trouble

was coming. Right. One of those airplanes had I guess he thought he

was landing, but he had just touched the ground and came right back up

and he was right there, and we went this way and he went this

way, and it shook the helicopter. I mean it was close. And

one of the guys in the helicopter said, oh, s now, he's

in the helicopter preachers right. So this is what he followed it with,

Dear Lord, please cleanse me, because you say out of the mounds of

the heart, the mouth speaks, and I don't want my heart to be

full of It's a strange way to repent. But he meant it with tears

running down his eyes. What's in your heart? Because what's in your heart

it's what you're gonna get out of your life. Because your words create the

environment around you in which things are attracted. Your words create an atmosphere.

An atmosphere creates a climate, and a climate sustained will create a culture.

And culture has the power to draw things to it. That's why you're here.

The culture of this place drew you to it. That's why people fly

from all over the world to go to Las Vegas. The culture draws them.

And whatever's in your heart has created a culture in your life, and

it is drawing things to that culture. And that's why you feel like you're

sliding further and you haven't been able to do anything at around about it.

All you need to do is get a piece of string, because it all

starts with reminding yourselves of the principles of God. And see what I'm gonna

do. I'm gonna get a string and wrap around my finger so I'll get

a haircut soon. Church. I love you and I want the best for

you. Our staff, we all love you and we want the best for

you. We have people here to have the capacity to love so hard and

so deep it's unbelievable. But you have to do the hard work. How

much I love you doesn't matter. You have to do the hard work of

righteous living. That becomes holiness. That all the abundance of my heart.

When my mouth speaks, it creates a godly culture that grows, that draws

godly things and the blessings of God and the principles of God. Every promise

in God's Word is yes and amen if you've created the culture to draw it.

And it starts in moments just like this on a holiday weekend, where

we decide to do something where we take that self inventory, and then we

do something as simple as putting a reminder in front of ourselves, and it

changes our behavior until our heart can take over and become the spiritual reflex of

our life. Everybody's standing with me all over, every head about, every

eye closed, all over the building. If you're here today, you got

areas in your life that you know they're just not quite right. You want

to improve those areas of your life. Beast, you just slip up against

Ask me, pastor, I need to get better in some places. I

need to Amen. Amen, amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen,

hands up every where, amen, amen, amen, amen. Put

your hands down, every eye open, every head looking around. See.

We can make an altar call right now and bring you down to the altar.

But then that just convinces you that it's supposed to be knee laying my

hands on you. That changes everything. That's not what changes everything. Your

decisions are what changes everything. So let's pray together, say pray this.

When we say, dear Lord, I love you, help me love you

better. Show me those things that don't please you, I'll turn from them,

move towards your testimonies. Help me write the stream around the difficult parts

of my life. Transform me by anointing my decisions in Jesus name, Amen,

the band's gonna sing this final song, and if our altar team would

come, if you have a need of any kind in your life, you're

sick in your body, if you're traveling, if you're need a financial miracle,

whatever it is, we want to. We want to lay hands on

you and pray for you. So if our altar team would come and get

ready, um, we want to. We want to pray for you as

we sing this last song. Don't wait, we're gonna We're gonna close it

down when we get to the end of the song. And Pastor Clay