Forming Delight

Today's reading is from Psalms one.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither.

In all that he does he prospers.

The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Therefore, the wicked will 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 wicked will perish.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Welcome to Church this morning.

Thanks for joining us.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

We're moving through a short series this January.

In fact, it will just be this January.

We kind of kicked it off secretly with the New Year's sermon last week.

And then for the next four weeks, because January has five Sundays, as if January weren't long enough.

January is a very long month.

You'll find out, especially towards the end.

Like eternity.

It's Einstein's joke about eternity.

It's a very long time, especially towards the end.

He wasn't a comedian, he was a physicist.

So we are moving through this series called Formation.

And the point of this is before we get back into Genesis in February, we are looking at how does how do the scriptures form our hearts for the present moment that we are called to.

And it's also about how we are formed together as a people under the scriptures.

And how, sort of like battle formations, we are able to stand shoulder to shoulder with one another.

Shoulder to shoulder, we will fight, fight.

Good job.

We uh will stand shoulder to shoulder with one another so that uh we as a body are able to move forward into the battles that the Lord has called us to, and not into ones that he hasn't called us to.

And that we would fight for the lines that he seeks to draw and not for the ones that he doesn't seek to draw.

Now that means we won't be able to listen to our culture to determine where the battle lines are, but we will m we will listen have to listen to the word of God in order to be formed appropriately.

That way, when we look back on our lives, we will think those were successful.

And this psalm is about a successful life.

It's about how we have the wisdom to lead a successful life, a life that is, uh when we look back on it, we'd say, this was actually meaningful.

And I participated in the things that mattered, and I spent my energy in the places that mattered.

But that means we need to let the Bible tell us what success is, and then it can tell us how we participate in that type of successful life.

So we're going to, uh, through this formation series, we're for the next four weeks, we're going to look at the first four psalms.

So we'll do Psalm one this week, and then two, and then three, and then four.

And these psalms are the beginning of the Psalter, of course, but they are also sort of a package in that they're teaching you how to move through the Psalms.

And they're giving you the big picture of what's happening.

At first, it's the big picture of what's happening with you in Psalm one, and then it's the big picture of what's happening cosmically on the scale of the world, with the Lord being the king of all creation in Psalm 2.

And then in Psalms 3 and 4, we come back down to this immediate human scale.

In Psalm 3, it's what does this feel like?

What does the world that's described in the Bible feel like to a person at night?

And then Psalm 4 is what does that feel like to a person in the morning?

Now, those are really tangible places.

Those are the places where I think our anxieties and our stressors and our vulnerabilities really meet us.

When you wake up in the morning, what does life look like?

When you go to bed at night, what do you think of the day that has passed and the day that's coming?

I think if we can form ourselves around this rhythm of a morning prayer and an evening prayer, this rhythm that the Psalms teach us, then we'll be able to have our hearts formed around the scriptures, around the Word of God, so that we're able to participate in the battles that He has called us to.

So we'll be formed.

So that's the purpose of formation.

Four weeks, you'll have all that, and then we'll go out and evangelize the world.

Jesus will come back, things will be great.

I don't know what we'll do in February.

Let's pray.

We'll move into today's text after a bit more of my rambling before we get there.

Holy Father, we praise you for your constancy, the practicality with which you meet us in your word.

Lord, it it is uh uh so attuned to the real needs and heartbreaks and desires of our hearts.

It has the tone of a caring Father who knows us completely and loves us dearly.

Lord, I pray that we might receive it as children who trust you and who desire to learn from you as we've seen the good outcome of your life and of your ways.

Lord, I pray that you would work this first psalm into our hearts, not just so that we might see it, but that so that we might be taught how to see the rest of your psalms and the rest of your scripture in the good intentions with which you've given it to us.

We lift this up, Lord, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So here's part of my thesis for wanting to do this series.

Part of my thesis is that uh 2022, the end of 2022, marked the end of 2020, and that now we're in a new sort of world.

Uh, 2020 was more than a year, it was like a tone.

And it was a tone of everything being tossed up into the air, and then all of us walking around disoriented, like raw nerves, trying to figure out where are the new boundaries and lines going to settle.

Now, I think through I think over the past couple of years, those boundary lines, those new cultural boundary lines have settled.

I think that's what will be interesting about 2023.

Now, this part of the sermon is for free and may just turn out to be false.

Just heads up.

But there I think that we'll experience a settledness of the boundary lines that will feel like it's a bit more surface level peaceful.

But then I think the surprise of 2023 will be seeing, okay, the places that the boundary lines have settled are very different.

And during 2020 through 2022, those felt like just sort of reactive, raw nerve types of arguments.

I think in 2023, in going forward, we'll see, oh no, the lines have settled, and we are more entrenched in these places than we've ever been before as a culture.

And you will also see that the lines that have settled are incredibly gerrymandered and not particularly helpful for diagnosing what is right, what is wrong, what are good ways forward, and what does a successful life look like?

So with this new settling of these strange new boundary lines, we need to we need to discern where is it that we as Christians orient our hearts?

Will it be towards the values that our culture describes as the places of success?

Or will we have to learn, perhaps for the first time, what success is, even when it is undermined by all that we would hear from our culture?

Now, the way that we do that is we let the Bible describe to us what success is.

And this first psalm does exactly that.

It teaches us how we as people orient towards a truly successful life, towards what is right and good, the boundary lines of the kingdom of heaven in which we might find our flourishing.

So the way that the psalm is structured is there's two paths that are described.

There's the path of the one who holds fast to the word of God, and then there's the path of those that reject the word of God.

And the metaphors that are used are natural metaphors.

They're of a tree and a shrub.

A tree that's thriving and a shrub that's in a desert land and is just blows away like a like a tumbleweed on Highway 93 or something.

And in those distinctions, we see that we're looking at, this leads us to the next part, which is what is the outcome of these different modes of being?

And this is something that the Bible needs to train us to do.

To not, to no longer, I should say, assess our lives by our immediate psychological experience of them, which can be painful and frustrating or joyful and blissful, but rather to assess the goodness of our lives by the outcomes towards which they are headed.

And that we might now, even here in the immediate term, participate in the hope of those outcomes.

That is the way that we can accurately assess our lives.

Okay, so let's look at these two paths, then we'll look at the outcomes of these paths.

Psalm 1, verse 1.

Psalms 1:1

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

Blessed is the man.

Let's start there, where the psalm starts.

Blessed is a word that just kind of bounces off of our religiously trained ears, but I want you to hear the word happy.

Happy is the man.

Happiness.

That remember remember happiness?

There's something about like your the the Christian life, one of the metrics for it, and I want to I want to use the word happiness.

I don't want to use the word joy right now.

Because we've all been trained by John Piper to kind of snap joy into a uh just a like a religious thing where it's like joy it has nothing to do with like a present experience of happiness.

It's just it's just future.

Think of the blessedness as happiness, but not a thin happiness.

Now I'm just gonna do a Piper impression.

Not a thin happiness, but one that is authentically expressed from a life well lived.

One that is able to be drawn from the depths of a person's experience in the world and their assessment of the way things have gone and the way things are headed that results in them actually being happy.

Your present experience of this person would be something like happiness.

One of my favorite pictures of this is in The Lord of the Rings.

Deal with it.

And it's when um Pippin uh commits himself to the to Denethor, the um uh steward of the throne at Minas Tirith.

All right, come on, the four of us that are still here.

And uh Gandalf is right there, and he's like, that was probably a mistake because Denethor is a bad man, and now you're in his army.

Uh and Pippin says, Are you disappointed?

Do you think what I did was wrong?

And Gandalf says, Yes, definitely.

It was definitely wrong.

And then Gandalf laughed, it says in the text.

And it describes him, and it says, Pippen looked at his face and he saw just the wrinkles of care.

But beneath those wrinkles of care, if you looked into his eyes, was a fountain of mirth that if it were to be set loose, would be able to set kingdoms laughing.

Now, I think that you should be able to look into a Christian's eyes.

And they might be able to say something like, you might be able to ask them, like, are you disappointed with the way things are going?

And they would be able to answer, Yeah, I am.

There's all sorts of ways in which I'm disappointed with the way things are going.

And then if you were to look deeper into their eyes, you'd be able to perceive a fountain of mirth that if it were to overflow would be able to set kingdoms laughing.

Because a Christian is able to see the disappointment of a present moment and then within their hearts connect with a more incredible story, a more grand narrative, one in which the outcomes are certain, and the battles that we desire to see won have been won.

And the justice and the mercy that we seek to be revealed have been revealed.

And the Christian, not in a uh not in a put on a happy face type of way, but in an authentic way, is able to be happy.

Blessed is the man.

All right, now let's move on to the fifth word in our psalm.

Who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers.

Okay, so the first aspect of this blessed life is described in terms of a rejection of an alternative.

The alternative is ever present.

And it is an alternative mode of being, one which it can be described by a rejection.

The alternative mode of being is described by a rejection of the things of God.

It's sinners, it's the wicked, and it's scoffers.

Now, I want us to kind of wrap our wrap our heads around what's being described here.

This isn't just a this isn't just saying don't sin.

It's not just saying don't uh hang out with bad people.

Uh uh it's not, it's it's it's bigger than that.

This is describing a whole person, a whole soul mode of being, mode of interacting with the world.

Uh though, and it these are described in these three sort of ways.

There's there's a description of thinking, the way that you think, the counsel that you receive from the wicked.

There's a description of behaving, that's your your walking with the sinners.

There's a description of belonging, which is your sitting down with scoffers.

There's this picture of a type of descent of a human's heart.

There's the there's the descent in just hearing counsel from the world.

Operate in this way, counter to the way that the scriptures have taught you to operate.

And you think, okay, yeah, I could entertain that.

I can see on a couple of levels where that would make sense.

And then that becomes your behavior, where you participate with that counsel in an embodied way, you make it manifest in the world.

And then in your making it manifest in the world, in yourself, it becomes a social arrangement.

It becomes the people that you are seated with, and your sitting with them makes sense.

It raises no more questions that you would be seated with them.

It begs no contradiction in your uh in your mind or in the minds of others.

It just makes sense that you would be seated there.

Now, part of what I want us to see is that our our mode of being, and the way that the Bible talks about our mode of being, it is it is it characterized by a rejection of God's ways or a rejection of those that reject God's ways, always has a social dynamic.

The phrase that I'm going to use is this is a this is a social moral mode of being.

Now, this is always true because you are a social people.

We all are.

We aren't just little atoms of piety and morality.

You know, what one of the easiest ways to not get in fights with people anymore is to go like live as a monk in the mountains or something.

You can become like a mountain person, you know?

When you when you go to a real mountain town and you drive up and it's like no one's glad I'm here.

It's because they're all living like monks.

It's uh it's a pietistic way of living.

And of course, a little meth.

But the that's probably an inappropriate joke.

Yeah.

I'm sorry, I apologize.

I legitimately do apologize.

I'm sorry, that was an appropriate joke.

The uh this is what a this is a look of shame.

So there's a it's a social moral mode of being.

We are always our seeking of God either makes us make sense with people who are seeking God or make sense with people who are not seeking God.

Where do you make sense?

If you were to look at the patterns and the dynamics of your life, do they look just the same as a rejection of God?

This is the question here, the social and moral dynamic.

So it's a description of this mode of being, it's a relational dynamic.

And what we're being called to here is we are deciding just the the way that the language is shaped is a description of a decisive moment of I will not fit that pattern.

I see that pattern of being, I am surrounded by it.

It makes sense all over the world, and I will not fit that pattern.

This is part of the blessed life.

Now here's the turn in Psalm in verse 2.

Listen to this, it says, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

Now, isn't it amazing that this psalm starts and says that the blessed life is a rejection of the world and the world's ways?

What is the turn?

It is delight.

The hinge point of the blessed life is what is it that you delight in?

Happiness and delight.

Can you believe we're talking about these types of things?

Happiness and delight.

Now, as delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

So this is not just a delight generally, you know, this is not just just a follow your bliss, but this is a delight particularly in the law of the Lord.

And think of that way of describing how you relate to the law of the Lord.

Think of how deeply human that way of relating is.

He doesn't say study.

He doesn't say uh know perfectly or answer all the riddles of the law of the Lord.

He he doesn't say ask the right questions of it.

He he doesn't say analyze appropriately, he says delight.

Delight in the law of the Lord.

Now, what is it?

How does it that you actually get to know something?

And get to know something really well, where it becomes a part of you and a part of your heart.

Think of it in terms of a person.

Since we went through Colossians, I've been trying, I've been asking myself this question to kind of like filter if something is real or not.

This has become a helpful, a helpful filter.

Could I could I know it if I tried to know it like I know a person?

This is helpful for maybe most helpful for like pop theology discussions.

Because there's a lot of just ever since Twitter, there's just like a lot of pop theology going on.

And it and it's usually it's like, I think that's not important, what we're talking about on that uh sort of pop theology movement.

And so a helpful, a helpful way to discern is this important or not, say, could I know it in the way that I know a person, which means could I make myself faithful to it, to this principle?

And could I participate in faithfulness to this principle?

And then in participating with it, would I grow to a fuller and fuller depth of knowledge of it, such that I would enjoy it more, and that I would, as my questions get answered, I would not discover that I have almost exhausted it, but I would discover that there is more and more depth.

Because that's what it's like to know a person.

And that process is motivated by delight.

When you delight in someone, you seek them out.

You desire to be next to them.

You want to know them more.

You enjoy their very presence, and you want to hear the things that they say.

You even want to be surprised by the things that they say.

You know, that's what it's like when you delight in a child.

And they say something, it's like, where did that come from?

You've never heard me say that.

And then you realize it came from them.

They're a whole, it's an entire person there.

And that is this experience of such delight, of there's this person here to know that you get to know and be known by.

That is the way that the Bible describes our relating to, our knowing the law of God, that it is a delight.

In the way that we participate in that delight, it says, and on his law he meditates day and night.

On his law, he meditates day and night.

Now, we read this last week.

I don't know which came first, but in Joshua 1.9, God talking to Joshua before sending him on a military conquest of the promised land, says, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you might be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

Then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

A successful life is tied to meditation on the Word of God.

Meditation on the law of God.

This word meditate is a wonderful word.

It has uh several connotations.

One of them is just like the cooing of a child, is what this word meditation can mean, which means you're experiencing the word of God where it's so buried within your heart that it just kind of pours out of you like the sounds of a child.

Another connotation of this word is muttering to yourself.

So, like when you're walking around and you just talk to yourself, you're talking to yourself through things, what is coming out?

How it's the word of God.

So you're saying it that you can hear it and participate with it.

It's it's buried deeply in your soul.

And then you when you walk around, you just mutter it to yourself.

I'm uh uh studying Hebrew now for school for a short while longer, and there's uh so I just live in flashcards, and Zach hears me in the office next door of just like making noises as I try.

And it Zach when I first started Hebrew, Zach like walked in my office and he was like, What are you doing?

Because it doesn't sound like any of our languages.

And it I would just be muttering to myself, like, you know, I am not all the time.

That's just what I'm singing to the black-eyed peas.

But there's a uh in order to put it in myself, I know I have to say it.

Okay.

This is utterly practical.

This is a requirement for a successful life.

The word of God must be known to you in such a way that you can call it to memory and say it to yourself.

Now, this has all been like the way I ordinarily preach, you know?

2020 is this idea, it's not even a time, you know, stuff like that.

What I'm saying here is just utterly practical.

You have to memorize scripture.

Like, what if we just took this at face value?

Where God said, in order to have a successful life, you had to meditate on the word of God.

You can't meditate on things that you don't know.

You can't mutter them to yourself.

You have to know them.

They have to be in your heart, and then they and then they go to work in your heart.

Men, then the next time that you're you're tempted towards pornography, what if you had in your mind?

Uh, is it really that bad?

It's just like these pictures, and does it really harm anybody?

And is there any real danger here that I'm playing with?

This is the will of God, your sanctification, that you would abstain from sexual immorality, that each one of you would be able to control his body with holiness and honor.

Well, that clears that one up.

But if that's not in if that if you can't think that thought, think God's thought after him, then you don't get to live within that boundary in the same way.

Because you're clever.

You're just very clever.

And one of the most trustworthy people in the world to you is you.

And so you often believe things that you think.

It's a terrible habit we have of thinking things and then thinking, oh, that's probably about right.

But then when you can think the word of God after you, or or think it think of this, man, I I am certain that the way that I am the way that I am living and the the patterns of my life are just demonstrating that I have fallen out of favor with the Lord, and when I hurl up my prayers, they are useless.

And then you're able to draw to mind, therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Okay.

I'll hold fast to Christ.

And there's no condemnation there.

Now I'll pray for what I need because I know I won't face the condemnation of the Lord when I'm praying for what I need.

You have to have those words in your mind.

The Bible, the great news about the Bible, one of the great things about the Bible is it's written down.

You can go there and you can learn the very words, the very words that God has for us, and you can place them into your mind so that you start to participate with them.

Here's a couple of practical ways.

Uh there's this website and app called FighterVerses.

It's like a John Piper themed sermon for some reason.

Uh because I think that's a desiring God thing.

And uh Fighter verses, uh, here's my favorite part about Fighter versus the the app.

First of all, it's the name.

Just kidding, I don't really like that name.

Uh it's uh that they have songs.

It's uh I find it very easy to memorize things in song.

That's much, much simpler for me.

It's the way that I learned the ABCs.

Still think of them that way to this day.

So you you we can learn things in songs.

They they just take these these verses uh uh and they give you to them in song.

Do not be conformed to this world to be transformed.

Exactly.

Somebody else is a fan.

Then you can know that.

You can just put these things in your heart.

And it okay, so that's that's one one thing you can do.

Just download the Fighter versus app and learn the songs.

See if they aren't useful.

For God alone, oh my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him.

See, it's you can just learn them.

He only is.

I'm just proving to you that I know it right now.

That's what I'm proving to you.

My rock and my salvation, my fortress.

He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress.

I shall not be shaken.

That's a helpful thing to know.

And then what if you just knew those words and took a phrase like that?

And what if you just took it at face value?

He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress.

I shall not be shaken.

And then what if, like a naive child listening to their father, you just believed it?

I won't be shaken.

I won't be shaken.

Now that becomes a different mode of being.

Oh man, I'm in a really tight spot with this particular sin that has just reared its head in my life, and I've never resisted before.

I don't even know what it feels like to resist before.

He's my rock, my salvation, my fortress.

I shall not be shaken.

All right, I'll try it with him.

I'll just believe him.

The next uh the topical memory system.

Some of you know what I'm talking about.

It's this, it's from the the navigators ministry.

They have this topical memory system.

It's like, I don't know how many verses, like 100 verses, maybe.

Uh and you can buy it, it's little flashcards that you carry around.

Some of the topics are wrong for the verses, but it was the 50s, you know.

We've come a long way in topical organization of scripture since then.

I memorized the topical memory system in college, and I believe me when I say, probably 90% of my cross-references from the first three years of preaching were just the topical memory system.

So it was enough just because it was put in my mind, and not even for particularly good motivations.

I just wanted to like look like I was doing it.

And then it just bore fruit because it's the word of God.

It wasn't up to me.

It was in my mind, and it's very useful.

It's like water to a tree, which is the part that we'll get to.

So that's a great place to memorize.

Another way to do this is when you hear a verse, when you read a verse, write it down on a note card.

I got a picture from a friend in our church this week of a verse from last week's sermon that you just wrote down on a note card.

Now tape it to your steering wheel and just live with that for a while.

And learn to do this silly thing of I'm just gonna take that at face value.

I can orient myself with these words.

They're true.

Mutter them to yourself.

I want you to think of your time in scripture.

Uh uh, you know the book uh The Whole Brain Child?

This is kind of the metaphor that I think of scripture through.

It's a good book on kids and their brains and using all of them.

And they describe how they're how you want to help a child integrate scary things into their uh into their story and into their brain.

So if like, you know, they're scared of um going swimming.

My tendency would be like, okay, we're not talking about swimming.

We'll just kind of spring it on them one day, and it's like, hey, we're at the pool.

They say that's not the way to do it.

The way to do it is to talk about it and tell a story, and then they become familiar with it, and it becomes more integrated, and it's an easier thing for them to experience.

I want you to think of the scripture as these are ways of integrating the word of God into your mind so that you become more and more transformed by it.

The ways that you can do this are you can have verses that you have memorized and that your mind returns to.

You know, when I wake up in the morning, one of the first things that I think is do not fear, for I'm with you.

Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.

I will strengthen you.

Surely I will help you, surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

And then I'll say to myself, thank you.

Now stop calling me Shirley, and then I'll get on with my day.

Those having those verses just in there, they become like anchors that you can hang the rest of your Bible knowledge on.

Then you have your everyday Bible reading.

When you just live in the Word every day, all of a sudden you're saying, Oh, check it out, that pattern that's in that verse, it's being shown here in the story.

And you're starting to think like the scripture is teaching you to think.

And then times of study, like Bible studies, which we'll have upcoming as a church.

And you'll learn, oh wow, see the details of this pattern are shown here as well.

And then now you're you're having it all these different levels, at the level of the verse, at the level of your ordinary reading, at the level of study, this integration.

And then you start to think like the scriptures.

And it allows you to interpret the world.

That is a life of success.

Okay.

Those are ways of engaging with scripture.

Next, the natural outcome of this process.

Psalm 1, verse 3.

Psalms 1:3

He is like a tree planted by streams of water, the person who meditates day and night on the Word of God.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.

In all that he does, he prospers.

Couple of things about this metaphor.

He's going to move into these natural metaphors.

Now, natural, what we mean by that is look, you can observe this process, and the process of a tree being planted by water is analogous to a person who meditates on the word of God.

Those are like the same thing.

So just as when a tree doesn't have water, it dies.

A person who doesn't have the word of God dies.

They wither.

This is the way that these two things relate to each other.

The psalmist is saying, look, these ordinary patterns of the world can be applied with these things.

Now, an interesting thing is that that word streams of water is the word for streams is just like a man-made canal.

So it's not just like you found a stream, the person who planted the tree.

They didn't just find a stream, they made a stream.

And the stream is made for the watering of the tree.

And the tree is planted by the stream so that it would be watered.

We see this attunement between the word of God and our hearts.

It is made for you.

God spoke these things for your hearing.

He said them so that they might nourish you and your life.

This is not just an ancient text by which you need to become some expert and wrestle with.

It is understandable.

It can be known by you because it was written with you in mind, for you, perfectly attuned.

And then you are planted by it.

So the one who made the stream and the one who made you, do you see the complement?

So we should trust the word of God like that.

Then what are the actions of it?

What happens?

The tree then yields its fruit in its seasons.

So this doesn't mean that you'll you're just like yielding fruit in the middle of winter.

This isn't saying that when you come to the word of God, you somehow transcend what it means.

Excuse me, transcend what it means to be a human.

You see, the tree doesn't become something that's like like more than a tree.

It just becomes the fullness of what it means to be a tree.

You become the fullness of what it means to be a human.

In the way that God intended, uh in the way that before the fall, the way Adam and Eve could have participated in the fullness of their humanity, this is given to us in this.

Its leaf does not wither.

So that means when dry seasons come and when the dangers of the world surround us, this tree is able to remain and continue participating in the fullness of what it means to be a tree.

When the dry seasons come, resting, meditating, staying in the Word of God, knowing it in your heart, hearing the law of God allows you to remain the fullness of what it means to be a human.

When you see the ways of the world are constantly trying to compartmentalize yourself and denigrate what it means to be a human.

They're either trying to deny the body and elevate the spirit, or deny the spirit and elevate the body, and the word of God comes to you and says, Don't do that.

Both are good.

Enjoy them in the way that God has made you to be.

Your work is good, your family life is in the way, your family life is good, your work is in the way.

No, these are good things.

Hold them in the proportion that the Word of God teaches you to hold them in.

You should, I mean, we literally have like simultaneously a like these rival product-generating cult online cultures of hustle culture and like self-care culture.

Because if you're doing one, you're probably going to need the other.

And these are both just ways of saying, ways of just getting the world out of proportion beyond what it means to be human.

You can't be working all the time.

You can't just be comforting yourself all the time.

That's not a human way of being.

We need the word of God to allow us to do the things like what a tree does.

It bears its fruit in its season.

What does that mean for a human?

It handles proportionally the things that they are called to.

In all that he does, he prospers.

Look at the end.

It is a glorious end.

True success.

Now the outcome for the wicked.

The wicked are not so, it says in verse 4, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Picture the stability of a tree and then wind-driven chaff.

Jeremiah also gives uh this same analogy in a section that's almost exactly like this psalm.

And he doesn't describe chaff being blown away.

He just says, just like a withered desert shrub.

But this one's even more extreme of an image.

It's like that withered desert shrub has already uh uprooted itself and been blown away by the wind.

We say that we can't even mark our location by it.

But a tree has this stability, even a generational stability, that passes itself on, replicates itself.

The shrub blows away.

It amounts to nothing.

There's, I'm late to this song, but that Evet brother song, No Hard Feelings, great song.

You guys should listen to it.

And there's this line that is just stuck with me because it's a meditation on death.

And he says, when it's ash and dust for cash and lust.

Man, that's a good place.

We should consider that moment.

You know, there's a moment that will come in each of our lives where there's not any more cash to get, there's no next thing on the horizon, there's no next person to kiss, there's no next image to see.

We're done.

Now, what did my life mean then?

When I can no longer hide the realities of is my life a success or is it not, in terms of just what's coming next?

What about the moment when it is done?

Could there be something that is successful?

Could my life be called something that's successful then?

What that is, is that's judgment day.

And it is by judgment day that we determine whether our lives have been good or have been bad.

This is where the psalm ends.

Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

Why is it so important that we learn to assess our lives by the Word of God?

It is because that is the fundamental assessment of what our lives are.

And so we need to learn to participate in that.

The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way the righteous Of the wicked will perish.

Our hearts get formed, and we become oriented rightly by an understanding that the Lord calls us to a fullness of life in the patterns that he calls us to live in.

And that those very patterns that he calls us to live in will become the judgment under which we stand.

Now, what is that judgment like?

It is like the tree that says, I don't need water.

Now, what is the judgment on that tree?

Don't you see these are very ordinary things?

These are very natural outcomes.

Now, why don't we see them?

Why are they so hard to participate in?

Well, it's because when we assess just on the immediate terms of our own experience, we are so easily deceived by our sin.

Which says, look, that pattern of sin that that person is living in seems to be generating just good outcome after good outcome.

Like the psalmist in Psalm 73 says, My feet almost slipped, I stumbled because I saw that the wicked were living with such ease and such splendor and living in such wonderful ways.

But then I went to the house of the Lord and I considered their ends, and I realized that it amounted to nothing.

We need the wisdom to consider our ends.

And the way that you consider an end that you aren't at yet is always by faith.

So we receive by faith that the ways of the Lord are good for me.

How could I know a thing like that?

Well, what could God do to demonstrate that he is for you, not against you?

What if he didn't wait until you measured up to his standards to come and show you his goodness?

But what if instead he came to you while you were not measuring up to his standards and while you were sinning against him?

And at great cost to himself, he took on the dryness and the witheredness of your decisions, experiencing your death so that you might have his life.

Then you might consider this is a trustworthy God.

And his willingness to sacrifice for me out of the depth of his love towards mows me demonstrates his love in a way that's insurmountable.

And so I will trust him.

I will trust him in the way that I seek him.

I will trust him in his word.

I will trust what he says about me.

That will become the pattern of my thinking and the pattern of my life, and it will plant me like a tree by streams of water.

I might be able to participate in that flourishing.

So, for this first formation series, orient towards the Word of God.

The word of God that teaches us the gospel.

The word of God that shows us his graciousness towards us in Christ Jesus.

He is good.

There's the promise of a wise, successful, happy life.

I know that sounds all health and wealthy and prosperity.

Gospel in Joel Osteeny.

You know, like I should plaster a better smile on and sell a board game.

I might.

I won't, I've not got a board game.

Coming to the word of God.

Is our only hope of being properly oriented.

So be formed after the word of God.

That's my exhortation for you this morning.

He is good and trustworthy.

Are there any questions, Ian?

Sweet.

How do you go about meditating on the law of God day and night?

What are some practical steps for that?

Yeah, the fighter verses, TMS, writing down verses and thinking about them.

Try and uh this week, okay, let's do this.

Memorize a verse this week.

Let's memorize uh Joshua 1.8.

Oh, I had it written down in here.

No, no, no.

Joshua 1.9.

Joshua 1.9.

Uh it says, This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it.

Then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.

That's a memory verse about memory verses.

It's a meta-memory verse.

The reason that one's good to start with is uh because when you're memorizing it, you'll be thinking, is this even worth it?

Should I even be taking this time and effort to memorize a memory verse?

And then you'll think, oh, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth.

Oh, okay, I guess it's worth it.

Then you'll keep going.

Not all of them have a cheat code built in like that, but that one does.

Joshua 1.9.

All right, let's pray and take communion.

Father, we praise you for your word, that it nourishes us.

Lord, I pray that this time of communion, the sacrament that we participate in, would also nourish our hearts.

Lord, what could the fruit be of our lives being formed by your word?

Lord, let us be a people who crave it, like we crave food.

And I know that we do in principle, because we crave orientation.

We crave knowing where we are and who we are and where we stand in a in a radically disorienting word.

Lord, let us not go to broken cisterns anymore, but let us go to your word, the true word of life.

By your spirit, inform our hearts by it.

Let it shape our minds, that our minds might be transformed, we might hold fast to you for your glory and our joy.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.