An Introduction to the Psalms and Psalm 1 - Psalms: The Heartbeat of God

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of the Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Rudd Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

So, introduction to Psalms, four aspects.

Let me give you what I think.

There's 25 aspects to Psalms, at least, but I'm just gonna give you the four that are outstanding to me about Psalms.

So these are the four rubrics that I would work from in understanding the purpose of the Psalms.

The first is this: number one, Psalms are a sanctuary of the heart.

The Psalms are a sanctuary of the heart.

If you take your Bible right here, if you have an Old and New Testament, and you just open it up in the middle, boom, you are in about Psalm 58.

So at the heart of the Bible is the Psalms, and at the heart of God is the Psalms.

God's heart is no more revealed more deeply than in the Psalms.

Now, God's heart is deeply revealed in all books of the Bible, but nothing more deeply than the Psalms.

How many of you grew up with a pocket Bible?

Those were really popular in the 70s, especially.

You had pocket Bibles.

And I have a pocket Bible that I carry for hunting.

Whenever I'm hunting and fishing, I've always got this camo pocket Bible, and guess what it has?

It only has the New Testament, so it's thin and the Psalms.

It always has New Testament and the Psalms, because this is the most beloved book of the ages.

Whether one comes from a Jewish background, a Christian background, a Catholic background, an Orthodox background, a more liberal mainline church background, more conservative evangelical background, everybody loves the Psalms.

The Psalms are of the heartbeat of God.

Martin Luther, the great Bible reformer, said in the Psalms, we look into the heart of God and all the saints, and we seem to gaze into fair pleasures and gardens, into heaven itself, where blooms in sweet, refreshing, gladdening flowers of holy and happy thoughts about God and all his benefits.

A little bit over the top, flowery, but Luther, who really understood the scriptures.

I mean, he really understood the scripture.

He knew it so well, he knew the Greek and Hebrew so well that he actually gave us a German translation.

John Calvin said of the Psalms, I have been wont to call this book not inappropriately an anatomy of all parts of the soul.

So the heart of God is found in the Psalms.

Number two, Psalms are the hymn book and the prayer book of God.

Psalms are the hymn book and the prayer book of others, called the Psalter.

If God had a hymnal, it's the Psalms.

And, you know, we read in Revelation 4 and 5 about all the seraphim and the cherubim and the hosts of heaven worshiping before the Lord, 24 elders falling before the Lord, it could be, I mean, I could be wrong on this, probably am, but it could be that they're actually worshiping with the Psalms.

It is the hymn book of God.

N.T.

Wright said, quote, to recognize that the Psalms call us to pray and sing at the intersection of the times, of our time and God's time, of the then and the now and the not yet, is to understand how these emotions are to be held within the rhythms of life lived in God's presence.

Now, David, the only character in the Bible described as a man after God's own heart, wrote 79 Psalms.

So this is a man after God's own heart, writing down what he discovered about God's heart.

Isn't that amazing?

And so if you don't know how to pray, and so many of you over the past year have said to me or to Liz at different times, I don't know how to pray.

What do you do when you pray?

I want to pray more.

I want to learn how to pray more.

I've said countless times, pick a psalm.

Pick a psalm, and maybe the best way to do it is correspond with the day.

So today is the fifth.

Take the fifth Psalm and just read a verse and pray it back to God.

That's the best way to learn how to pray, is use the Psalms as a prayer book for your life.

It's the great hymn book of the faith.

Most of our even present-day praise and worship that we sing, that you hear on the radio, the phraseology of much of that actually comes from the Psalms.

You show me a person who is aspiring to be a songwriter, I will show you a person that I'm talking about, a successful songwriter.

That's a person who is spending an inordinate amount of time in the Psalm.

This is the rhythm of God.

This is the rhythm of God.

God is a poet.

God's a poet.

Sometimes we think of God as a theologian, and he is.

Maybe sometimes we think of God as just our Savior, and He is.

We might see God as a freedom fighter, and He is.

But at the heart of God is He's a poet.

And he picks poets to do his work.

You know, David, king, warrior, fighter, leader of men, at the end of his life in 2 Samuel 23:1, describes himself not from his kingship, not from his perspective of a warrior, but as, quote, the sweet psalmist of Israel.

2 Samuel 23:1

David saw his life.

The most important thing he did were the psalms and the songs and the prayers that he gave us as a poet.

And so the Jews would ascend and use this, we have the ascension psalms of them going up to Zion, singing and praying the Psalms.

Jews today, Orthodox Jews especially, still sing and pray the Psalms in their home.

It is the most sacred of hymnals in all of the world.

If you were in prison or on a lonely island, you had nothing from the Bible, this is what you'd want.

You'd want these 150 Psalms in your hand.

Number three, Psalms express emotional vulnerability about real life issues.

Psalms express emotional vulnerability about real life issues.

So turn, probably the most famous I know of would be Psalm 51.

So in Psalm 51, and by the way, in the Psalms, we'll talk more about this as the summer goes along, there's a postscript.

There's like a subtitle on the Psalms that kind of give you the theme of that particular psalm.

I don't consider the subtitles to be inerrant or infallible.

It's not actual scripture, but these are here for you to see.

And in Psalm 51, you'll read this title over the Psalm to the chief musician, a psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him after he had gone into Bathsheba.

He writes, Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your right, your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my transgressions and my sin is always before me.

Against you.

You only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight, that you may be found just when you speak, and blameless when you judge.

You see, that's a heart cry.

That's a man who is repenting of sin.

That's Psalm 51.

There's no book of the Bible that's so vulnerable about the pains of life and the difficulties of life.

I mean, David wants to slay the wicked.

You ever wanted to slay the wicked?

You know, it's not in our religious protocol today to act like you're a man who would be writing one of these Psalms.

This is vulnerable stuff, you guys.

This is where real life issues happen, and they do.

I mean, look at turn to the left and go to Psalm.

Look at Psalm 3.

Okay, Psalm 3 is when David is running from his son Absalom, who's taken over the crown, taken over the, taken over Jerusalem.

Lord, how they have increased who trouble me.

Many are those who rise up against me.

Many are those who say of me, There's no help for him in God.

But you, O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory, and the one who lifts up my head.

I cried to the Lord with my voice, and he heard me from his holy hill.

I lay down and slept, I awoke, for the Lord sustained me.

I will not be afraid of ten thousand of people who have set themselves against me all around.

Arise, O Lord, save me, O my God, for you have struck all my enemies on the cheekbone.

Man, folks, that's pretty darn specific.

I mean, he's basically saying God with a really big ring.

I mean, pop a man right on the cheekbone.

He's talking about his son from Bathsheba, who's rebelled against him, and all the armies with him.

And yet, here's the guy that soon as his military leader takes out his son Absalom.

He just weeps.

The guy's like bipolar sometimes.

I mean, seriously.

So here he's crying out, it's his prayer, he's in trouble.

And then when he's resolved of his trouble, he has a meltdown against the guy who did what he thought the king wanted him to do.

That's you guys.

That's me.

We're that way.

We are e all of us have times we're like an emotional basket case.

We go through, we get angry about the dumbest things.

I know I'm a pastor.

I hang out with some of you guys.

You're so stable on one thing, and you're just you're off your rocker on the other.

And I don't get it, man.

I don't get you guys.

Okay?

But you know what?

I don't get me.

Just ask my wife.

She doesn't get me.

I don't get her.

I quit trying to figure out my wife three days after we got married.

It seemed obvious to me we should go be snorkeling, we should go play putt-putt golf, and we should dive off cliffs.

No interest.

It's a mind of her own.

Okay, fourthly, Psalms are about, and this is interesting.

This is really interesting.

Psalms are about the purpose of being human.

Psalms are about the purpose of being human.

The central point of the Psalms is about what it means to be a human being on the earth and taking dominion for the kingdom of God.

So look at Psalm 8.

Look at Psalm 8, verse 4.

Psalms 8:4

What is man that you're mindful of him, and the Son of Man that you visit him?

For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and you have crowned him with glory and honor.

You have made him to have dominion over the work of your hands.

Folks, if you want to be a dominion taker, if you want to flow as a kingdom person wherever you go, read the Psalms.

The Psalms are about how even in emotional, difficult times, we can still have dominion.

You see, the thing about David, and the thing about the Psalms is this is very interesting, and you'll find this as you read it.

They're real emotional, and there's cries and guttural challenges for the writer of that psalm, but they always, always, always end up praising God at the end of the psalm.

So it's like you're on this wavelength of just emotional roller coaster, and then always in the Psalms it comes back, I'm gonna, yet I'm gonna praise him.

Yet I'm gonna thank him for what he will do.

So look at, I mean, let's look back, look at Psalm 9.

The tune of death of the sun.

I don't know what that was about, but in Psalm 9, it says to the chief musician, to the tune of death of the sun.

He talks about praising, look at verse 3, enemies, talking about enemies, enemies in verse 6, enemies, enemies, enemies, all the way through.

And then look at verse 19.

Arise, O Lord, do not let man prevail, let the nations be judged in your sight, put them in the fear of the Lord, that the nations may know themselves to be but men.

There's always this resolution at the end of the Psalms of praise, challenge, and thanksgiving, and a purpose and a mission from God that He's gonna work in a mighty and powerful way.

Isn't that awesome?

And so when you read the Psalms, it's gonna be energy to your soul.

It's gonna be softness and kindness and poetry to your heart.

But it also enables you to understand in being a human, God has called us to be his vicars here on the earth.

NT Wright again writes, the Psalms, all of them, mean what they mean within the larger worldview that all of Scripture articulates.

It goes something like this God created humans in the beginning to be his vice rulers over the world.

That is part, at least, for what it means that humans were made in God's image.

The image is like an angled mirror reflecting God's wise and carrying love into the world, bringing order and fruitfulness to the garden where humans are placed.

So, you guys, when we are in a context where there's a lot of anger, God would have us to be a big angled mirror of his kindness, his humility shining into that anger.

Where we see deep level bitterness, we are an angled mirror through the Psalms shining his forgiveness into that context.

When we get into the, sometimes we're in the political arena and it's and it's a cesspool.

But we're called to bring God's order there.

We're that angled mirror.

That's what N.T.

Wright's saying.

We're that angled mirror where the light of Christ shines into that.

We don't become like them.

We bring the kingdom to them.

Like an angled mirror.

And so let's dive into Psalms.

Let's start with Psalm 1.

Good place to start.

Let's start with Psalm 1.

And it's a beautiful Psalm.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And in his law he meditates day and night.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither.

Whatever he does shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away.

Verse 5.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

This psalm is not unlike the opening of the Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, in which he frames the destiny of two cities.

As it was the best of times and the worst of times.

It's as if Psalm 1 is a tale of two kinds of people.

There is the righteous man, there is the man who is like a tree planted by rivers of water, and then there is the ungodly man who's going to turn out to be like chaff.

And so you have a choice.

It's a tale of two people.

And Psalms gives us an introduction to the entire book through Psalm 1.

Psalm 1, whoever, when they were putting this together, it could have been David, it could have been others, but when they're when they're putting this together, they pick the perfect Psalm because it's the way of prosperity of soul or the way of ungodliness of the soul.

It's the way of a righteous path, and it's the way of an unrighteous path.

It's asking the question: who's going to influence you the most?

Because whoever influences you is the one who paints your future for you.

Look at verse 6.

The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

I have seen pastor after pastor, Christian leader after Christian leader, Christians that I knew who chose the path of ungodliness never to be heard of again.

All of their influence that they once had is gone.

It is swept away because of the choices they make.

So, guys, in this room, you have a choice.

And the challenge before you is do you want the way of God's prosperity, or do you want to make your own way, which will perish as it goes?

So look at verse 1.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful.

Number one, write this down.

You will prosper if you're not influenced by ungodly people.

You will prosper if you're not influenced, and the operable word is influenced by ungodly people.

So he starts off with blessed.

What does that remind you of?

Reminds me of the Sermon on the Mount, the blesseds.

It's the same word for happy.

You can find happiness if you'll be careful about who influences you.

Who do you listen to, church?

Is it coming more from Twitter than from the Bible?

Is it coming more from TV than the Bible?

Is it coming more from YouTube than the Bible?

Because who you listen to is who will influence your future.

That's who will influence your future.

I know people that all they want to talk about is music, and that's fine.

They're musicians, that's great.

Music's wonderful, it's cool, it's beautiful.

That's, I mean, Psalms is about music.

But if all you're about is music, the influence of music, as great as that is, it still can't take precedence over God's word.

Music changes.

You know, right?

I mean, the music today is so different than in my day.

And that's why I still listen to you know, the Doobie Brothers and Marsha Tucker Band and Fire on the mountain, lightning in the sky.

No, never mind.

But so it's so we have influences, but look at the progression or the regression in verse one, because this is the part that's so important.

He says here, who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands, so circle walks, circle stands in the path of sinners, nor sits, circle sits in the seat of the scorn.

We see the progression?

So look, you guys, you can't do anything but walk in the path of the world.

That's that's our job, that's that's the world we live in, that's where we shop.

I mean, everything's the world.

So we we we walk in that, but we don't have to listen to the counsel of the world.

You have to walk in it, but you don't have to be influenced by it.

Because when we start listening to the influences of this world, we tend to To stop and listen some more.

We start to stand.

It's one thing to walk, now you're starting to stand.

And now when you stand, you're listening a little bit more.

And when you start standing in that influence, those influences start to impact the way we think, and the way we think determines our future.

So who's influencing you?

Listen, your future will be determined by who has the most influence over your life.

Your future will be determined by who has the most influence in your life.

Look at your five best friends, and that'll tell you who has the most influence in your life.

If the five friends that you're hanging out with have made this book the key to their life, then this book will have impact for determining your future, even among those friends that you have.

But if you're walking, trying to walk with the Lord, but you're hanging out with ungodly people, that's where the influence is going to come from.

Because what happens is you walk, and then you stand, and then you sit.

And now you're sitting.

That's where you're hanging out.

You're hanging out, and that's who's going to have influence.

And if you want to know your future, look at the median of everything you see financially, emotionally, relationally, with the five best people you hang out with, that's where your future is.

That's your future right there.

So if you like the five people that you're hanging out with the most, and you kind of like where they're at on all these areas, then cool.

Because that's what you're gonna do.

You're gonna be just like that.

You're gonna be the medium of the five people you listen to the most and are influencing your life.

That's your future ten years from now.

You'll be at the same socioeconomic place as them.

You'll be at the same emotional stability as them.

Now, listen, I'm not saying that everybody you you walk with has to be perfect or anything like that, but I but I'm saying that there are people that are joy suckers.

I mean, they are hoover lips.

I mean, when they come up to you, they've got their little machine and they come right up to you and they take out that vacuum and they stick it in your heart and they suck out every bit of joy that you've got.

Anybody know what I'm talking about?

All right?

You need to have a few joy suckers because they don't have any friends anyway.

So maybe you can help them.

Maybe you can take out that pocket knife and flip it open and just cut, you know, cut that hose, man, and start telling them, you know what?

I had a conversation at Tuesday morning with a guy.

And he went on and on about how awful his wife is, and he and all kinds of stuff.

I won't go into it.

You might know him.

But anyway, he goes on and on and on, and I said, you know, I get sick of listening to you.

And he goes, What?

I said, Oh, it's always everybody else's fault.

Right?

Right?

I said, I'm tired of it.

I've known you now for like a year, and every time we're together, it's about them, them, them.

I never hear about how God's working in your life.

And you know what?

If you don't ever learn how to grow up before you grow old, you're gonna grow old and never grow up.

And so, come on, man.

What's God doing in your life?

Quit blaming everybody.

So you got joy suckers, okay?

And then and then you've got people in your life that when you're around them, you feel encouraged.

You feel fired up, and they say stuff and you go, man, yeah.

And you weren't, you know, you weren't even that fired up, but when you get done, they they kind of get you fired up.

You need a lot of those people in your life.

All right?

So I'm challenging you on a practical level, who's influencing you?

Let people who pick up, listen to podcasts that pick you up, listen to speakers, listen to people who get you fired up, have friends that you laugh a lot with, that you enjoy, that love Jesus.

Don't hang out with these other people.

I mean, you should be a witness to them and you should cut their joy sucker vacuum hose as much as possible.

But some of you have too many joysuckers in your life.

And you're depressed and everything, and it's like you might need to make some new friends out there.

So that's that's what he's saying in verse one.

All right.

Verse two.

All right, let's get more positive now, all right?

But his delight, his delight, he's talking about the man who's blessed, the man who's going places with his life, his delight is in the law of the Lord.

And in his law, he meditates day and night.

You will prosper if you delight in the law of the Lord.

You will prosper in your soul if you delight in the Lord.

And when we become people who prosper within, most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time we prosper in what we do.

Because we're hearing from God.

We're in God's will.

We know God's will, we understand God's will because we're regularly in God's word.

And folks, Sunday morning is not enough.

If you're depending on me to be the law of the Lord for you for that week, that is not good enough.

We got 168 hours in a week.

And Sunday morning is where we do it together, and it's powerful, and it's anointed by God.

But you got to take it home and do it as a family, too, and delighting in the law of the Lord.

C.S.

Lewis said, one's delight in the law is a delight in having touched firmness.

Like the pedestrians delight in feeling the hard road beneath his feet after a false shortcut has long entangled him in a muddy field.

It's a beautiful description.

I have sloshed through just gooey, muddy places out in the wilderness, and then you hit firm ground and say, oh, it takes a lot less energy.

You get to places a whole lot faster.

You move quicker, and you thought that that muddy, that muddy field was the shortcut, and it all it does is bog you down.

And so C.S.

Lewis is saying, delighting in the Lord is finding the firmness of your walk after being in the mud of trying to have a shortcut in your life.

Don't do shortcuts.

Shortcuts don't work.

Just avoiding that person in the lobby, not gonna work.

At some point, you gotta deal with the stuff.

You gotta get honest and say, you hurt my feelings when?

Please forgive me.

I've held resentment against you.

Would you help me?

Let's restart this thing.

See, the law of the Lord is almost always counterintuitive.

It's not what you want to do.

And that's why sometimes it's hard.

It's hard to be a man of God.

It's hard to be a woman of God because it says things like forgive.

And you don't want to forgive.

So there's, isn't it weird?

And I've done this too, like you feel like somehow you really, I'm really showing them because I'm not going to forgive them.

Like they'll never be my friend again.

You can't trust them.

And then you got all this bitterness and it's bogging you down, and they don't even know what you're talking about.

They've long moved on.

One thing I'm convinced of, most people don't care about you.

Most people don't care about me.

They think, oh, Steve, they don't care.

Most people are so selfish that all they're doing is thinking about themselves.

So when you release forgiveness on someone, you get free.

Right?

That's counterintuitive.

But that's the right thing to do is that you forgive, you release forgiveness.

And then you get set free.

They don't even remember what you're all upset about most of the time.

They don't.

And don't do this.

Like go up to someone and say, I forgive you.

I had a guy a couple weeks ago said, I went up to my wife, my wife, and she's filing for divorce, and I told her, I forgive you.

And I was like, that's the stupidest thing you could have ever done.

But the Bible would say that you forgive.

And if you're going to talk to someone about it, ask them for their forgiveness toward you for not for holding resentment against them.

Take your responsibility.

It's counterintuitive.

So delighting in the law of the Lord, church, is delighting in the will of God.

It's delighting in the actual word of God that is inerrant and it's infallible.

It is that two-edged sword that we need.

And it says, meditate.

Delights in the law of the Lord.

Meditates day and night.

In the Hebrew, that's haga.

And meditation is such a safe, lame, religious term.

Isaiah uses haga for a lion that growls over his prey.

Growl is haga.

So one time we were I was out at my fire pit in the back, and Sage, one of my gun dogs, came by and it had an elk leg.

I don't know where it got where it got it from.

But had this big elk leg, and it's just tossing it up in the air, kicking it around, gnawing on it, licking it, sucking on it, throwing it around some more, looking to see if any of the other dogs have noticed it yet.

Then goes over under a tree and just growls.

Just sits there and growls as it chews on the elk bone.

Because what Isaiah is saying to us is that haga is so much deeper than meditation.

It's growling over, it's battling over, it's sucking out the nutrients of God's word so that the word of God metabolizes into your soul.

His protein, his vitamins, his enzymes from the Spirit of God metabolize into your spiritual bloodstream.

That's meditation.

And so sometimes you toss it, and sometimes you throw it, and sometimes you get angry about it.

If the word of God hasn't made you angry a few times, you're not spending enough time in God's word.

This book ticks me off sometimes.

No, it really does.

I'm not being facetious, I'm being serious.

There's stuff in here like I there's no way I'm doing that, Lord.

Ain't no way.

And the Lord says, ah you growl over this thief, and it'll metabolize into your soul.

You'll do it.

Maybe not right now, but you will.

This is the way of the righteous man.

This is the way of prosperity.

It's not easy.

Prosperity is not easy.

The easy way is the lazy man's way.

And that's to listen to the easy little answers that come our way.

And not listening to the Lord.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper.

David is an outdoorsman.

David lived his life outdoors.

It was only later that he came into the palace.

And those were not his best years by any means.

His best years were when he was outside, outdoors, in caves, beside streams.

The metaphors that are all through the Psalms are the metaphors of a man who's been outdoors and he sees the beauty of God.

Turn in your Bibles to Psalm 19.

The heavens declare the glory of God.

This is a Psalm of David to the chief musician.

And the firmament shows his handiwork.

Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge.

Where there is no speech and no language, where their voice is not heard, their line has gone out through all of the earth and their words to the ends of the world.

In them he has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and on and on it goes.

This is a man who is familiar with trees, streams, mountains, valleys, sunrises, sunsets, storms.

David often collaborates with the thunder and the lightning as unto the voice of God.

The voice of the Lord thunders.

And so he says it's like a tree.

You want to be like a tree planted by the rivers of water.

That's what a righteous man is.

So we were in Buna Vista, and we decided to go as a family on a hike.

And so if you go down to that part, that little park where the baseball field is, and you keep going down, you park right there, and then you walk down and there's a bridge.

Okay?

You take that bridge and there's a trail.

You can go right or left.

If you go right, about another hundred yards, there's another right and left, another split.

And if you go left, you keep going further and further away from the river, it becomes arid, dry, dusty, rocky, cacti, pinyon pine.

Just that's the feeling.

Windy.

But then if you take that right and go back down, you come down to the river again.

There's another bridge that you cross, which is about a, I think, about a mile further south.

You come through, and then you follow the trail, and you're right next to the river.

And it is full of foliage and trees and flowers and bees and butterflies.

And it's like night and day.

And when we follow the ways of the influence of the ungodly, it is pinyon pine, it is rocks, it is cacti, it's dry, and it's hot.

But if we decide to be a man or a woman that delights in the law of the Lord, one who becomes a righteous man, a man who's stable, as C.S.

Lewis said, walking on the firm ground of God's word.

It's beautiful, it's bountiful.

You're next to the rivers.

And so David wrote this because I can see him running from Saul for all those years.

Between 13, how do you evaluate it?

Between 13 and 17 years, he runs from Saul and he would come to the streams.

There, right along the Dead Sea area, you come to the stream, and there's probably a big oak or a big uh ash tree.

And he's looking at it, he said, wow, you know, it's it's midwinter and there's still leaves on the tree.

But it's because it's next to the river.

And you get in the shade of that, ah, it's refreshing.

You ever get in the shade of a godly man or the shade of a godly woman?

There's something beautiful about that.

There's a security because they have chosen to let their roots run deep next to the Word of God, the streams of water flowing through their lives, so that even in those bad years, and we all go through bad seasons, we all go through hard times, they're still prosperous.

Not as much as before.

Probably less than what'll be in the future, though, because they stay steady.

Just plod along.

Don't quit.

Don't get too emotional.

Don't get all freaked out.

Don't change everything.

You know, keep being a person who delights in the word, who gnawing, haga, growling in the word, they will be eventually prosperous in everything that they do.

Don't you want to be like that?

Isn't that what you want?

Isn't that what you want?

Because God, God has that for every person.

Verse 4, the ungodly are not so, but they're like chaff which the wind drives away.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

So we don't know much about chaff today, because probably most of us don't come from farms or ranches where you ground wheat or you ground corn, and you had chaff in the air, and it would blow.

But you know garlic.

So garlic's the best example I know is to take you take that clove of garlic, and we have this round plastic cylindrical thing that has ridges on the inside, and you just run that as hard as you can in the garlic, right?

And then you turn it over and out plops that chunk of garlic ready to be chopped up, and then you got chaff.

And even when there's no wind, the chaff just blows away so easily.

It just blows away.

Actually, the other day I had done some garlic that way, and it came and dogs came in and were sniffing it, and they were driving me crazy because they were under my feet all the time.

So I just decided to drop the garlic down there.

Scattered.

So I wrote this in my social media.

Like higher criticism in the 60s, postmodernism in the 90s, progressive Christianity or wokism, in the 21st century is the newest fad that reinterprets scripture and downgrades Christianity to fit the cultural melee of the times.

Folks, pastors all across the country are falling into the trap of the newest fad of being woke, deconstructing their faith in progressive Christianity.

Well, I'm old enough to have grown up in a liturgically, theologically, and politically liberal home in Georgia, South Carolina, which classically, the type of theology we call neo-orthodoxy, not important for you to know all the meanings of these words, but it's basically classic German higher criticism that started in the 1930s and 40s in America.

It was already in Europe, the 1930s and 40s in America, up until the 70s.

And there were great mainline churches back then that as they began to embrace this new form of liberalism, they lost their perspective on God's word, and their churches died, usually started with the pastor.

Then I was a vineyard pastor in the 90s, and it was postmodernism.

And everybody who was really cool was into postmodernity, postmodern theology.

And I would read and study the writers that time, a guy named Brian McLaren was kind of the spokesperson, kind of the pope of postmodernism.

Who's heard of Brian McLaren?

Chaff, baby.

Chaff.

If I'd have asked that question in 1995, 1996, every hand would go up.

But is he reinterpreting?

Of scripture as he began to go the way of postmodernism, which has to do in a nutshell about language, how you interpret language.

You don't even know who he is now.

Chaff.

Chaff.

Then as we moved into the third millennium and 21st century, it's kind of moved in what we call progressive.

Anybody know what I mean by progressive Christianity?

Raise your hand if you understand what I'm talking about.

Okay, maybe half of you.

Well, just if this is the first time you're hearing about it, it's like progressive politics.

It's very similar.

And I would, it's it's kind of being woke.

It's like, hey, you know, I woke up.

And I don't know that salvation is that way.

I don't believe in the literal, plenary, verbal inspiration of scripture.

And it's very sophisticated.

And they're very intellectual.

And we have discovered that there's so much more to the scriptures than that.

And they're kind of like you're a peon.

Because you believe in the Bible.

The Bible.

Chaff.

Chaff.

All blow away.

Don't you want to be like a tree planted by the rivers in 1990 and 2003 and 2013 and 2022.

And we just continue to prosper.

We just continue to have fruit.

We continue to make a difference.

We continue to make an impact.

The only difference is it's getting better and better and stronger and stronger because we're more mature than ever and we're in God's word longer and more, and we're meditating in it, and we're delighting in it.

Chaff.

Chaff.

Blows away.

So God wants you, men and women, to delight in the law of the Lord.

And then day after day and week after week, you're going to become stronger and stronger, and you're going to get hit, and you guys are going to experience failures, and you're going to say, This doesn't work, and it's really hard.

And sickness comes and cancers come and we don't always get healed.

And sometimes our marriages struggle, but we keep delighting in the law of the Lord.

We continue to trust Him.

We continue to have faith in Him.

That's how we prosper.

You show me any man, you show me any woman that has prospered his life, I'll say there's a lot of failure there.

There's a lot of pain there.

There's a lot of hurt there.

There's a lot of regrets.

But they have chosen the way of the Lord because it's still the best way.

It's still the right way.

That's how we read the Psalms, church.

We read the Psalms.

We meditate.

We growl in it this summer.

We let it come in and seep into our bones.

We metabolize grace.

We metabolize mercy.

We metabolize power.

We metabolize love into our bones and we become greater people.

We become better people.

And our friends may drop by the wayside, and they will.

But you look for new friends.

You look for new cohorts.

You look for new warriors.

And you go with them into the things of the Lord.

And the Lord will know your way.

Isn't that fun?

He knows the way of the righteous.

He's got a plan for your life that he's working out.

If you will obey and follow and worship and pray and gnaw on and growl in and meditate upon God's word.

He's going to bless you.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Road Podcast.

It's been my joy to be a part of your life today.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.

God bless you.