Highlights: Psalm 119 - Week 2 (Father's Day 2023)

I'll continue in our series saw one nineteen today. Specifically, I want to

talk to you on the topic of smelling like my daddy. Smelling like my

daddy this morning. So, if you got a Bible, go to Psalm

chapter one, nineteen. We're gonna start reading in verse ten. Psalm one

nineteen, verse ten. Have I said Happy Father's Day? Yet, happy

Father's Day? And say what, all the dads stand up, Let's give

him my hand. If your dad stand up, let's give him a hand.

Amen. Amen, Amen, Amen. Thank you guys so much,

because without you, we wouldn't be here. Amen. Psalm one nineteen,

verse ten says, with my whole heart, I have sought you, Oh,

let me not wander from your commandments, your word. I've hidden in

my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed or you, Oh

Lord, teach me your statutes. With my lips. I have declared all

the judgments of your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies

as much as in all riches. I meditate on your precepts and contemplate your

ways. Let's pray, Father, thank you for your word. It's the

only change agent we have here. On the face of the planet. And

I pray that today we leave changed at least a little different than the way

we walked in. But for some of us, let us have a revolutionary

experience with you this morning, that we don't even look like the same person

when we leave this place. I ask it in Jesus name. Amen,

Amen, and amen, the Psalmist writes, with my whole heart, I've

sought you. Let me not wander from your commandments. With everything that's in

me, I am pursuing and chasing you. My desire is to be with

you. My desire is to have an encounter, because what is a pursuit

without an encounter? See, the whole purpose of the pursuit is the encounter.

You know. I used to play Hide and go Seek with my girls,

and when I would hide, I never hid. I know some of

y'all like probably one of the only games I ever played with my kids that

I didn't just play to win. I destroyed my kids in every board game.

Come on, somebody, Cards destruction, basketball destruction, because I want

them to realize you got to work hard to succeed in life. Amen.

The world doesn't give you anything. But when we played Hide and go Seek,

I always hid for the purpose of being found. Stand behind the door

with my foot sticking out. I would just stand up against the wall,

real quiet, because the whole purpose of hiding, go seek is not the

hiding and the seeking. It is the finding that's the purpose of hiding.

Go seek. And they would say you could You could hear them looking daddy,

daddy day. And if they would walk by and not see my obvious

hiding place, come on, somebody, I'd slide out a little more so

they could see me. And then I could hear that anticipation, in that

excitement as they would see my foot or my leg or or whatever was sticking

out of the hiding place, and that incitement in that little giggle, and

I would jump out and they'd run and I'd grab him and hug it,

because it's it's the encounter. The reason for the pursuit is the encounter.

That is the the reason we chase. And the Psalmist goes in depth and

he says, I'm everything in me is pursuing you. It's it's chasing after

you. And then he begins to break down this pursuit of what that pursuit

looks like. He says, your word in my heart. I pursue you,

Lord by by hiding your word in my heart, by memorizing and being

in the word of God. I hide it in my heart, and that's

part of my pursuit for you. Then he says, teach me your statutes.

Let me learn a little more. It's not just enough that I read.

It's not just enough that I that I consume the information, But teach

it to me so that I master it, because I know if I understand

it, I'll be a little more like you. You know, that's the

purpose of our faith, is that we beget a little more like God each

and every day until the point where we're so close that we go and we

get our reward and be with Him in glory. That it's part of that

pursuit is to learn with my lips, I have declared all the judgments of

your mouth. That I chase after you by vocally talking about you, by

by expressing my gratefulness, by expressing my gratitude, by saying things, by

letting people know that I am in pursuit of you and that I love you

Father. How often do we literally live our faith out loud? Because we

should live our lives as a testimony, but people should also hear that testimony

with our mouth, that we speak of the goodness and the grace of the

Father. He says, I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies.

You know, we miss a lot in our English language. Sometimes when we

read scripture this word rejoice, we think it's uh, you know, boo.

But rejoice is a very specific action before the Lord, one that he

seems to enjoy. I don't know why. I don't know why the Lord

particularly likes the things that he likes, but there are certain things that he

likes. And the word rejoice means first of all, to jump up and

down. But that's not the extent of it. It is too Now listen,

if I fall, somebody, come pick me up. Not as agile

as I used to be, Amen, Blake, get ready is to jump

up and down and to spin about feverishly. That literally, Lord, I'm

willing to look ridiculous in the sight of the world, in my pursuit of

you, that the opinions of others don't matter because I'm chasing after you.

Because I want to chase after you so that I can have an encounter with

you. And then he says in verse fifteen, I will meditate on your

precepts and contemplate your ways. The Bible says that when Israel was leaving Egypt,

that Israel knew God's acts, what he did, the things that he

did. But Moses that says knew God's ways. There's a difference between knowing

his acts and knowing his ways, because if you just know his acts,

you may look at the circumstance in the situation around you and say, God

must be mad at me. He must be trying to kill me because things

are not going the way I want them to go. But if I know

God's ways, then I realized that the temporary discomfort I may be in is

leading to something greater on the other side, and whatever's on the other side

is earth the temporary discomfort that I currently find myself residing in. So it

is a concentration on knowing God's ways. The modern Church has gotten away from

trying to understand God's ways, and we are a give me people, God,

give me, give me, give me God take take take God.

God, just don't just don't, don't. Don't make me have to go

through this again. Take away my pain. Take away Amen and he is

a good, good father who will. But there's one thing that we need

to understand about scripture is that God never promised to deliver us out of anything,

but he promised to deliver us through everything. Because the process of going

through then people see our lives. And when we get on the other side

and we experience that goodness and that graciousness and that those immense blessings on the

other side, that we look back and we realize that we should help other

people through the journey that they're on, through their pain and they're hurt and

they're brokenness until they get to the blessing where we find ourselves. Now,

see, that's the pursuit of God, that we find him in our blessings.

Psalm chapter sixty three, verse eight says, my soul follows close behind

you. Your right hand upholds me. That sounds really good. But when

we really dig into that scripture a little more, this is what This is

how the English Standard version the SV says that it says, my soul clings

to you. See this whole thing of pursuit and running after you means that

there's still a distance between me and God, that I chasing after him.

And I'm not there yet, and I'm still continuing. But but pursued is

not about a distance. It's about an encounter. It's about being so close

that we live in that residual glory, those those hinder parts. The Bible

calls at that place that is so close to God that we experience him,

but we still allow him to lead us. Listen to how it reads in

the message. It says, if I'm sleepless at midnight, I spend the

hours in grateful reflection. Because you've always stood up for me, I'm free

to run and play. I hold on to you for dear life, and

you hold me steady as a post. He says, I hold on to

you. I cling to you for dear life. That imagery of a child

holding onto their father with their arms and legs wrapped around in their face,

ducked into his chest. That encounter with the father that makes everything a little

different, That makes me feel safe, that makes me feel loved, that

makes me feel secure. When I was growing up, I have a lot

of great memories of encounters with my dad. I remember when I was three

years old, he had this old green hunting jacket, had big pockets,

and he would go quail hunting all the time, and I would stand in

the pockets of that jacket and put my arms around his neck, and he

would walk miles quail hunting, carrying me on his back. But the most

intense sensation that I remember is I can remember smelling coffee and gunpowder, and

the smell is what. The most intense memory of those encounters is. I

know that that smell of my father, Come on somebody. I can remember

when he went through what I call his brute face, where he wore brute

aftershave all the time, and like when he would pull up, he used

so much you could smell it. When he pulled up in the art it

was like, whoa Dad's home. My eyes are burning, Come on,

somebody. But there's some great memories attached to that. And when I walk

through a store and I see a bottle of brute coloone, or I smell

that brute coloone, it takes me back to those days when I was a

child and I felt safe in the embracing cover of my father. I remember

when Lexie was small and I would go and be on the golf course with

Madison. I would spend hours on the golf course with Mays, and I

would come home and I would sit on the couch and Lexie would run up

and she would climb up in my lap and she would say, Daddy,

you smell like golf. What she meant as I smell like grass and sweat.

But to her, that was the smell of golf. That was the

smell of her daddy coming home from being with her sister, helping her sister

accomplish the thing that she loved. It was just this past year during softball

season, we came home and she sat down on the couch next to me

and she said, Daddy, you almost smell like golf with some dirt mixed

in. And it's that smell that triggers those moments, that creates a sensation

on the inside of us. And the purpose of the pursuit is that we

crop climb into the lap of the father and we spend time meditating with a

death grip around his neck, saying nothing can separate me from my daddy,

nothing can separate me from the Father. That we begin to smell like him,

that we begin to have those sensations burned into a different part of our

brain so that we can have an experience lived out with him, that's unlike

anybody else. And Second Corinthians, chapter two, starting in verse fourteen,

this smell translates into our real everyday lives, the smell of the Father.

It says, Now, thanks be to God, who always leads us in

triumph in Christ and through us diffuses the fragrance of his knowledge in every place.

Now, let me first of all the triumph of Christ. We in

our language, in our culture, we think triumph is just simply a victory,

right, I mean, we're triumphant. But literally a triumph in these

days was something completely different. It was not the victory, it was the

procession of victory that followed the victory. Literally, a triumph was when all

of the enemies were lined up and shackled behind the king. So all of

the defeated army, all of the generals, any dignitary that was left alive,

would be shackled, and the king would march them through the capital city

and everyone would gather to see the trophies of the defeated foes behind the king.

And the Bible says that Christ leads us in triumph that literally every bit

of brokenness, every hurt, every pain, every wound. Everything you have

defeated, and everything that you have overcome becomes your testimony, and he leads

you through your dwelling place. He leads you through your life, dragging those

things behind you so that the world can see them. That's what triumph is.

That it's not about winning the victory. It's the spools of victory.

It's the celebration of the victory and those things that we've defeated. Listen,

if you've overcome an addiction, you need to tell people you've overcome an addiction.

If you've been through hurt and pain, you to express the people to

hurt and pain you've come through. That's part of your triumph. It's not

a guilty state on your life. It's the Jesus being Jesus being the Lord

and breaking those things off of you so that you can be a lighthouse to

the people around you. Now, thanks be to God who always leads us

in triumph, in Christ and through us diffuses the fragrance of his knowledge into

every place. Raise your hand. If you like bacon. Rest, y'all

are liars. You know it's not just the taste of bacon, it's the

smell of bacon. You can you can have. There can be twenty doors

shut between you and the bacon, and when it hits the pen, that

aroma just fills the room. There's nothing that can block it. There's just

it's that smell that awakes you. Maybe for you it's coffee, or I

don't know, maybe for you. I know that when I go to a

to a Latin restaurant and I and I leave, that I smell like it.

Amen, I can come home. Don't tell Angie where I go to

lunch. Come home, and she'll look at me and she'll say, you

hate elsibrero, didn't you? Because that fragrance leads the way. And he

says that that we when we spend time with Daddy, when we start smelling

like Daddy, that there is an aroma that precedes us that can get through

the tightest closed door around people's hearts, they can begin to experience God.

In verse fifteen, it says, for we are to God the fragrance of

Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to

the one where the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other

the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things?

He says, we are the aroma of Christ, and to those that

are dying, it's the aroma of death. That there's a stark realization that

there's something happening here, and I want to change my path and my destination

because I don't like the way that smells. And someone has either drawn towards

life or their repulse and they turned the other way. But we are that

aroma that we carry the smell of the Father when we spent time with him,

when we've been in his presence. Then it says we're the aroma of

life leading to life. That literally, those who are born again, those

who are who have had an encounter with Jesus, that they're that life has

awakened on the inside of them. It's like when Mary came to Elizabeth and

for the very first time, John the Baptist leapt in her womb. It

was the aroma of life that caused life to spring forth and pull greatness out,

and pull purpose out, and promise out, and and all of those

things. And they begin to experience life and life more abundantly because that's who

God has created us to be the givers of life and the bringers of life.

But we have to spend time with the Father. The band can come

and get ready. In verse seventeen, here's where it all. Here's where

everything plays out right here. For we are not say we actually, you

know, it's not we say me say I I say when we're telling Jesper

God major I for I am not. All right, that's quits saying it.

I feel like I'm speaking with an interpreter. For I am not for

we are not. For I am not as so many. You know what

that means in the original language, a lot. For we are not as

so many. For we're not as a lot peddling the word of God.

For those of us that smell like the Father, we're not like a lot

of people who just use Jesus to get something, who go by the name

Christians. So that we can get the benefit of being a Christian, because

especially here in the Bible Belt, where we leave, where we live,

there are still some benefits of identifying as a Christian. There's a certain expectation

where we live that most everyone we come in contact with their Christians. After

all, we live in the South, and everybody in the South knows the

good Lord, Boy, the good Lords. He's been good to me.

Lord's been good to me. Hey, can I pray for you? Yeah?

Man, I love the Good Lord. Hey I pastor Cornerstone tabern Niacole.

Why don't you go on? Not your boy? I tell you what.

I love the Good Lord, me and him. I go to so

and so. Let me tell you something. The bigger the church, the

more people that say they go there. But there are large churches that if

everybody that said they went there went there, come on, now, they

wouldn't have enough seats. They're simply peddling the word of God. They're just

peddling that influence. But he says, we're not like a lot of them

that are just peddling the word of God. But as of sincerity, but

as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ, that

we're not we're not using him as leverage. We are literally with him.

And because we're with Him when we say those things, we know he's standing

there endorsing or denying what we say, because it's with sincerity, transparency,

a commitment to God that we live the life we live. I don't know

about you, but I want to live every day of my life smelling like

my daddy. I want to live every day of my life being that aroma,

that fragrance that permeates the world around me. The only way to do

that is to seek Him with our whole hearts. I'm gonna run through very

quickly the way you do that, and we're still gonna make an altar call.

But this is some This is some homework. This is some take homework.

Amen. If you don't have if you can't write all these things down,

go back and listen to it online. As a matter of fact,

you can skip fifty seven minutes in and you should get to about right now

when you go back and watch it online. Hide his word in your heart.

Let the Holy Spirit teach you what that word means. Declare Him with

your mouth, allow that testimony to ring true. Rejoice, be willing to

be ridiculous in the sight of the world in order to obtain Christ, and

meditate and spend time not a fast food God, but a fine dining experience

with the Father. You know, maybe you're here today and you've never asked

Jesus to be your lord and savior. You've never asked him to forgive you

of your sins. And this whole idea of smelling like the Father. This

whole idea of the pursuit, this whole idea of of an encounter with Jesus,

is far from you. Right here today you can meet Jesus and give

him your life. He will become your savior and your pathway to the Father.

All you have to do is receive him. Maybe you don't know what

Jesus has done for you to earn the right. But two thousand years ago,

the son of God, spotless and innocent in every way, stood before

a hard judge who found him guilty of nothing. And the people us,

you and me, we demanded his death. Anyway. It was our sin,

our brokenness, that called for his life. He was beaten beyond human

recognition. He was mocked and spat upon. He was made to carry the

instrument of his own death, that old, rugged cross across his shoulders as

he walked through those dusty streets of Jerusalem and made his way up Calvary's incline.

And there he laid himself down on a cross. He was nailed there

and lifted up, suspended between heaven and earth, a bridge between fallen man

and Holy God. And this is what he said about you. He said,

Father, forgive them. It was Steve Sin that put me here,

but forgive him. It was Michael Sin, but forgive him was Dean Sin,

It was Jackson, even as good as Mark is, it was Mark

Sin. Forgive them, Father, because they don't know what they were doing.

They they don't know. Forgive them. And his blood pulled the foot

of the cross, the most powerful substance ever known, the power to forgive

sins. And he looked into heaven and he breathed his last and he said

it is finished. And he was put in a borrowed tomb and three days

later, And now listen, if you're not moved by that, it's okay,

because there are people that would. You probably have people in your life

that would lay down their life for you, But you don't have one person

in your life who loves you so much that they would come back from the

dead for you. But Jesus shattered the whole concept of sacrifice when he left

the grave and he came back to life for the love of humanity, and

he defeated death, hell, and the grave so that you could have life

and life more abundantly and experience him on the mountaintop and in the valley,

in the same way, with the same peace and the same strength. Everybody

stand with me all over the building today. And if you're here today,

you've never asked Jesus to be your lord. I'm going to count to three

and I want you to step out from where you are and make your way

to the front. Or maybe you're here and you've done that before, but

you've allowed things to come between you and the Father. You don't quite smell

like the Daddy anymore because there's a distance that's developed. I'm gonna count to

three and if that's you and you say I want to get close to him

again, I just want to snuggle up to the Father this morning. If

that's you, I want you to step out and make your way to the

front on the count of three. You're not gonna look around and see if

anybody else is moving. That's not faith, that's popularity. Today. This

is all about you and the Father on Father's Day. So if you want

to make things right between you and him, if you feel any drawing,

step out and move. On the count of three, our prayer team is

gonna come and they're gonna be ready for your altar team. Come on,

come on, come on, come on, come on, move, move,

move, move, move. On the count of three, I want

you to step out, and I want you to move one, two,

three, step out and move right now. Come on. I want to

make things right with my father. I want to give my life to him

and surrender my life to him today. Come on, come on, come

on, come on, let's go. The band's gonna sing. These altars

are open, that drawing of your heart. Don't allow the enemy to steal

this moment from you, but celebrate it. Celebrate it with your heavenly father

today. Come on, come on, come on. I can't go that

to you that they can't he ain't you Jesus. The altars are open.

Can't control or tomorrow will opry