I invite you to turn to Psalm 119, beginning in verse 33. As you're turning there, I will remind you this is a Hebrew alphabetic acrostic, and so this is the fifth stanza or fifth letter. One other addendum here at the beginning, the bulletin this evening says, worldly, I'm, this is my mistake. I tried to invent a word, wordly. That's okay. And I think, I think spellcheck probably said, I'm not going to have any of that. So, so this is wordly watchings and worthless watchings. Psalm 119 verse 33. Teach me, Oh Lord, the way of your statutes and I shall keep it to the end. Give me understanding, and I shall keep your law. Indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart. Make me walk in the path of your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to covetousness. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in your way. Establish your word to your servant, who is devoted to fearing you. Turn away my reproach which I dread, for your judgments are good. Behold, I long for your precepts. Revive me in your righteousness. Let us pray. Will God help us again this evening? We are entirely dependent upon you. I am dependent upon you to preach your infallible word. Those hearing are entirely dependent upon you that you help them understand this word. Lord, we trust in you and we ask you to attend to us this evening, attend to your word, that it may be powerful and bold. Lord, you know our hearts and you know what we need this evening. Help each of us, Lord God, and direct and strengthen your word. In your name we do pray, amen. Well, this stanza, the fifth stanza, is remarkably similar to the fourth. In fact, if you just look back quickly and gaze over the fourth stanza, you will see very similar petitions. So there's a lot of continuity here. We see things like, teach me, and give me, and make me, and incline me. And then here in the fifth stanza, turn away my eyes, turn away my reproach, revive me, establish your word. What we do see then is a helplessness. We see the psalmist entirely dependent upon his God. He knows that without God, he would not learn the way he needs to learn. He knows without God that he would not receive what he needs to receive. We then are entirely dependent upon that this evening as well. Without the Lord, without his spirit, we will learn nothing. We will walk out of here not any different, the same. He again, the psalmist, is dependent that his heart would be turned to the Lord. He is indeed in a good place. And for all of us this evening, if we feel that dependence upon the Lord, if we come in here tonight and realize we are entirely dependent upon God, if we are to learn anything, if we are to apply anything, if the Lord is to take our hearts and to do his work within us, it is his work, it is his strength, and we must be humble before him. And in that sense, we must be helpless before him. We also see here the true desires of the psalmist. He desires that the Lord will do these things. He desires that the Lord would teach him and give him, provide for him what he needs to make him a vessel. He desires that, and that desire actually turns into a delight. And he further understands that that delight is ruled or shaped by sight. And so really this passage, what we see here is a contrast. We see a contrast between spiritual sight, that is sight from the heart, the depths of the heart, and worldly sight, that is sight from the flesh. And this passage before us also divides itself rather nicely into three portions, and we see that. It starts speaking of that site which provides godly desires, which produces godly desires, followed by site that produces covetous desires. And then lastly, again, site that gains the victory over covetousness. And so we will follow that natural tendency of the scriptures as we work our way through this text. So I invite you again, look back at verse 33. We see these petitions that I've already mentioned, but we see them more boldly here. Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. Whenever you beg of the Lord to teach us anything or to teach me, then we again, we're being humble before the Lord. We come to the Lord and we say, Lord, again, without you, without you teaching, I will learn nothing. We see here that the psalmist says, teach me, and he says, teach me the way. It's easy for us to think in terms of the way as simply a direction. Teach me the direction to go. And though perhaps some of that is here, the way really speaks of a course of life. And so the psalmist is saying, teach me, Lord, how to live. Teach me how to live according to your statutes. He's not asking simply then for new head knowledge. He's not asking to be taught new facts. He wants spiritual insight. He wants to see the beauties of the law. I am then convinced and ever more convinced that the more that we as Christians look at the law and the statutes of God, the more they become beautiful to us. You think in terms of wife and husband. When you first met, there was of course a beauty there. There was attraction. But then as the marriage continues, the beauty increases over and over again. And that's what we see here. The psalmist is saying, Lord, make this beautiful to me. Help me walk in that way. Help me live my life according to your statutes. And then we will love them. We will live by them and be happy to live by them. And then we will defend them. This is what we see when the psalmist asked to be taught of the Lord. We also see this. He speaks of perseverance. He says, teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end. Keep it, it being the way. I have never, in all my years of teaching, I've never had a student come to me and say, Mr. McCaskill, what you taught me today, I will keep to the end. I am more inclined to know that the next day that I ask the students what they've remembered from the lesson the previous day, there's a full blank. No, we have difficulties here, do we not? But the psalmist is absolutely sure that if the Lord teaches him, he will keep it to the end. He will persevere. Well, how then do we persevere? It's moment by moment. We seek the Lord in all things. We seek the Lord in our very minutes of our day. We seek the Lord moment by moment, and those moments by moments turn into days, and those days into weeks, and those weeks into months, and then the months into years. If you've never read Jonathan Edwards' resolutions, I invite you to read his resolutions. We're still here at the beginning of a new year. And it's a good time to take a full spiritual assessment. And that's what happens here for Jonathan Edwards back in the 1700s when he wrote these resolutions and he was determined to go back over them constantly and consistently and to check his heart and to see where his heart was before the Lord. And that's how we walk before the Lord. Day by day, moment by moment, hour by hour. Well, we also see here that the psalmist does not just ask to be taught, but he asked for understanding. And we see that again, give me understanding, the psalmist says. And we might again think, well, if we're being taught, we should understand. But we know better in our own lives, do we not? Often we're taught several things, many things, and we don't truly understand them. And so we see here that the psalmist is coupling purposely that understanding which only comes from the Lord, that understanding which comes from the Lord and affects the heart. Give me understanding and I shall keep your law and observe it with my whole heart. Why the whole heart? Because we understand fully that the heart is the organ of spiritual sight. It's where the desires, the true desires and the delights are held in the heart. That coupling of the mind, that coupling of the soul, the emotions, the affections, all of that related to the heart. And here the psalmist again is saying, I want understanding in the heart. I want to feel it. Let me ask you, how many times have you come to church and you've learned something? How many times have you spent time in the Word of God and you've learned something? How many times then have you come to the Word of God and you felt something? This is what the psalmist desires. He wants to feel, he wants to know, he wants it to affect his heart. Thinking again in terms of coming to the scriptures, how many times have we come to the scriptures and we've read the words of the Lord and at that very moment we want to set up memorial stones because we know the Lord has met us there. Spurgeon says it this way, understanding operates on the affections. It convinces the heart of the beauty of the law so that the soul loves it with all its powers. Then it reveals the majesty of the lawgiver and the whole nature bows before his supreme will. And so we see the order he desires. It changes the statutes, the law changes his affections. Those affections gives him a love for the law because It's the Lord, it's God behind the law. He loves his God. Well, we continue here, he is taught, he begs for understanding, and then he says, make me walk in the path of your commandments. We say walking again, this is, This is that journey, right? This is the Christian journey where we set out before the Lord with all of our strength, but we know that we are not held by God's strength. It's God who holds us and keeps us in the way. It's God that keeps us on his path. But if you notice again what he says after this, he says, make me walk in the path of your commandments for I delight in it. He delights in it. He could do nothing. Nothing would give him more pleasure than to walk in God's statutes. We then question our own hearts. Is that true of us? Would we say that nothing would give us more delight than to walk in the Lord's statutes, than to walk in the law of the Lord? I don't know if you've been to the Hershey factory in Pennsylvania. When we were there, which was several years ago, we went on one of the tours, of course, And they took us through, and I can't remember all of it, but I do remember the fact that they showed us how chocolate was made, and went back to the plant, and the cocoa pods, and all of that, and how it was dried and ground up, and that's how they produced chocolate. But after they went through that whole spiel about how chocolate was produced, I don't know if I desire chocolate anymore. But here's what they did at the very end of it. They gave us a piece of chocolate. And we put that chocolate on our tongues and we tasted it. And then we started to desire it. And then they opened the doors and there's the store. They have you. This is what the psalmist wants to do. The word of God, he wants to feel it. He wants to delight in it. As he reads the word of God, he wants to know God. He wants to feel it, delight it, delight in it. I'm also, and Susan will attest to this, and so will my children, I'm a field botany geek. I love field botany. I love to walk on trails and to identify plants, and as my family is way up ahead at this point, I'm still back there looking at flowers. I'm looking at bloodroot, and trillium, and trout lily, and all of these things that just, they're amazing. And I get down and I lay down on the ground and I look at those flowers and I just appreciate them. And I know in the flowers themselves is beauty, absolute beauty. But what really thrills me is the God who created them. There's a God who put time and effort in creating those beautiful things that bloom, they're up, they're gone before you know it. And when you find them, you treasure them. Now, if you're not a field botany geek like me, well, I invite you to become one. But that's OK. God gives us our own interest. But do we do that for the word of God? Do we again, as we go to the word of God, do we read the word of God and and do we find those flowers and those beautiful things in the text that make us just want to stop and stay and dwell on the word of God? Not because the print has something special in it, but because we know that God is behind it. It's his word. We need to delight in his word, and we can't delight in his word unless the Lord gives us that delight. And so we need to pray that, Lord, give us that delight. Help us to understand your word and to feel it. Well, we see then the law-focused stare brings godly desires. We need to focus on God's word. But then we notice that a worldly-focused stare brings covetous desires. Looking again at verse 36, the text says, incline my heart to your testimonies. Now notice again, it does not say incline my head or incline my mind. my heart, everything that I am. Incline my heart to your testimonies and not to covetousness. Why not to covetousness? Because that's the polar opposite desire as the desire that comes from God's holy word, God's statutes. Why do we need God to incline our hearts simply this? The heart is willing, but the flesh is weak. That word incline is pretty forceful. In the Hebrew, it means this. It means to stretch out, to extend, to bend. And what the psalmist is saying is bend my will towards you. Bend it toward you. Incline my will, because otherwise my will will be bent toward covetousness. I think in these terms, and I don't know much about construction, so forgive me if I speak incorrectly here, but I just think about rebarb. And I think about taking that piece of rebarb and trying to bend it with my own strength and not really being able to do that. And thinking, this is really what he's thinking of here. Lord, bend me towards you because my nature is to be bent toward myself. Lord, you have to bend me. You have to incline me. I can say with certainty this evening as I look around that you are covetousness, you have covetousness, that you covet. I can say that with certainty because I covet. We all covet. How do I know that? This is the natural frame of humanity. Again, Spurgeon says, covetousness is the inclination of nature and grace must make it undesirable to us. This sin is as harmful as it is common, and it is as mean as it is miserable. If you find someone who is truly covetous, that person will be mean and miserable. Or we could reverse it. Find a mean and miserable person, that person has a lot of covetousness in his heart. We don't have to look any farther than our spiritual ancestors. Think again about the garden, Eve. We look past this scene too quickly, I think often, and we don't understand the generosity and the mercy of our Lord as he creates and he puts Adam and Eve in that garden. And he says, you can have any fruit of this garden, anyone. And I happen to believe that they had more varieties than we have today. You can have anything, eat anything you want. Not that one. What happened? Once God said, not that one, our covetous nature says, why not? Young children, you even know how this works, do you not? Imagine mom cooking, baking your favorite cookies. Older ones, you can imagine this too. You've got your favorite cookie before you. There's a jar of cookies. And your mom looks in that jar and they all look the same to you. Nothing looks different to you. But your mom says, you see that cookie right there? You can't eat it. What do you think in your heart? You know what you're thinking right now. Why not? And then you come up with schemes. Maybe I should take that cookie and I can replace it with another one. Mom will never notice. This is our nature. We want what is prohibited, what is not given to us. We want that which we have been told we can't have. The serpent before Eve, of course, coming to the garden did the same. created as an angel, but he desired God's spot. My friends, we have been hearing a lot about this virus, COVID, and it's easy for us to think that the most deadly virus that we've ever heard of ever is COVID. But I tell you, the most deadly virus is covetousness. It came from Satan through Eve, through Adam, and here we are. We are suffering from it even today. You know this full well. A covetous heart eats away at our joy. It eats away at our happiness. It destroys friendships. It breaks the bonds of love. Bridges says, the native principle of man draws him to his own self. to his own indulgence, pleasure, covetousness, assuming a thousand forms of gratifying self at the expense of love. How many times? A thousand forms of gratifying self. I'm quite certain I may reach that number in one single day. We see here then covetousness is a battle of loves. Love for the world, love for self, takes precedence over love to God. 1 John 2.15, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. We can also think of the parable of the rich fool, right? He comes to Jesus. He asked Jesus about his inheritance. My brother will not give me the inheritance. And Jesus in his own way says, that's not why I came. I did not come to settle your dispute. Knowing that there was covetousness in the heart of that man, he gives them that parable and says, there was a man. And God blessed him. He tore down his barns and he built bigger ones, bigger ones. And then he said, I have done well. I will rest. The Lord says this very night your soul will be demanded. We might think about that parable and just say, well, I've never desired to build barns. I don't have a barn, never had a barn, never will. But we are covetous. If it's not Barnes, it's something else. When I look in my own heart, I think, what is it, Lord? And there's many things, but I can give you one. For me, it would be building more bookshelves to store the books that I have. And I may reason those are mostly theological books. Should I have them? But the point is the same. We want more. We want more. We want more. That covetousness that wants and desires something materially from somebody else, that's what's in picture here. But I think there's something even more subtle, and that is desiring positionally what someone else has. And I must admit here, this is a struggle for me. My friends, have you ever wanted a job that somebody else had? their perks, their salary, their benefits, and you just think to yourself, that was mine, that should be me. Why does that person have that job? Influence, why does that person have that influence? Why not me? Why do people not look to me and ask me those questions and desire what I have for them? What about friends? Why does that person have those friends? I'm more friendly than they are. Why aren't they my friends? What about their life, their ease, their power? And we start to see quickly that if we let this virus of covetousness have our heart, we will be discontent. And then before we know it, we'll be like Cain, ready to slay Abel. Pastors even suffer from this. Many pastors will say, well, I've never coveted a house or a car because I realized that my salary is probably not going to award me those opportunities, and that's fine. But then when the pastor down the road has more members, more people are being baptized, they've written a book, Then that's when the greed comes in. We start to say, I want that. That should be mine. And so we all have this covetous heart. Here's the challenge for us. We need to pray to the Lord, Lord, identify in my heart my covetous nature, identify it for me that I might repent of it. What is it in me? It may not be a house or car. You may be able to look at a Lamborghini come down the street and just say, that's a 10 box on wheels. Doesn't mean anything to me. But there's something else. There's something else there. Pray unto the Lord. Lord, identify that. What is keeping me from you? What is keeping me from your word? What is keeping me from desiring you and delighting in you? identify that Lord that I might repent of it." Well, he is proactive. Look at verse 37. He begs of the Lord. He says, turn away my eyes from looking at these worthless things and revive me in your way. Now he's begging of the Lord to be revived in the way. That means This covetous attitude that perhaps he has, and he has identified, has taken him away from that true desire of walking in the Lord. And he needs to be brought back, he needs to be revived in the Lord, that again, he will be in the way. In the Hebrew, to turn away is most often translated to pass over. And so in a sense, he's saying, let my eyes pass over these worthless things. Let my eyes not gaze on them. Let my eyes not pause and look at them and take a second and third and fourth look. Let my eyes pass over these worthless things. Calvin, in his wisdom, says it this way. As often then as we open our eyes, we must not forget that two gates are opened for the devil to enter our hearts. Unless God guards us by his Holy Spirit, Thinking about those two gates, the eyes, right? We're naive if we just leave those things open constantly and gaze and look. But many of us do that. We don't treat this opening in our head, these two openings, these gates, as Calvin says, we don't treat them as we should because God has given us a wonderful gift with vision. But we also must understand that covetousness is fed through the eyes. It is ironic. Either we believe the word to be worthy, or we believe the word to be worthless. What are these worthless things? Well, in the text here, worthless things, at least in the King James Version, is translated vanities. Empty things. Things of no eternal value. So that puts it in perspective. When we start to gaze and to look at those things intently that have absolutely no eternal value, those are the worthless things. Those are the vanities. Those are the vain things. And again, not just that they have no eternal value, but that they actually diminish the worth of God. Not that we could actually diminish the worth of God. But in our own hearts and minds, the word of God is diminished. My friends, the unsaved, and many Christians as well, see the world as worthy and the word of God as worthless. Will not our lives testify to which one is worthy and which one is worthless? What do we spend our time doing? What do we allow those eyes, those gates to vision, to see? What do we do with our free time? And I know we have busy lives and we have things we have to do, but on those moments where there's nothing before us, what enters our minds? What enters our hearts? Well, these worthless things deaden our souls. Now, what again are these worthless things? Of course, any sin. Any sin is a worthless thing. Pornography. Violent images. Some of you may read Tim Challies. He's a good author, and often he puts things very plainly for the readers. Often he has wonderful titles, and this Christmas I saw a title, and I think this article was actually several years old, but it was recycled this Christmas, and the title was something along these lines, Parents Do Not Give Your Kids Pornography for Christmas. You think, what right parent would give their child pornography? His point being, we give all of our children these electronic devices, phones, et cetera, And if we don't teach them how to use it, if we don't give them precautions, that will quickly become a window to pornography. And in essence, then, we've given our kids that very thing which we detest. We've got to be careful. We must then make a covenant with our own eyes. And parents, when our children are young, we have to make a covenant with their eyes before the Lord. They don't understand. They don't know the dangers. They don't know the temptations. That is our responsibility to do that. Young people, you must make a covenant with your eyes before the Lord. You must. Well, what about those things that are not sinful, at least not in form, they're not sinful. Are those still worthless things? And the answer is there's many things that are. Sports. I am not against sports. I love sports. But you know as well as I know, there are many Christians who will spend the entirety of their day on Saturday doing nothing but watching sports. I can't judge their heart. I can't. But we will allow those things into our minds. We will watch the commercials even, which are getting horrible. And we'll take all of that in and we will soak it up for a full day. What has it done? It's made us idle, lazy, and the things have gone. Video games will do the same thing. Even going to the gym. I'm not against that. I have a gym membership now. But you know, I've seen people in there, and I guess I'm accusing myself because I'm there to see them. But I've seen people, and every time I'm there, they're there. I think they live at the gym. Maybe they work there. I don't know. But they're always there. Even that. What are we allowing to take up our time? What are these worthless things in our own lives? There's a colleague at work with me. He's actually been very open and honest to students and he's asked them a lot of questions. And he's very concerned as I am. And we've talked a lot about this because we're both concerned. And he asked some of the students point blank, how many hours a day do you spend on your phone? And he actually got permission, says, I don't know that you can do this, but you can look in the phone and see how many hours you've been on the phone that day. And some of the students have been on the phone eight hours a day. I don't know how they do that because they've been at school for that long. And they're not supposed to be on the phone when they're at school. How is that even possible? Eight hours. There's the gates. Eight hours in front of a phone and all of those things coming and pouring into their minds. I read this the other day, there's this condition, I don't know if it's a condition or, it's got an acronym, so I guess it's a condition. Fear of missing out. FOMO, have you heard of that? This is what's happening to those young ones, right, our teenagers, a fear of missing out. This is why they're always on their phones, I'm gonna miss something. I'm going to miss something. I've got to be right here because my friends are doing things and I have fear that I will miss them. Is that not covetousness? I want to be at that moment, that moment, that moment, that moment, and I have a fear that I'm going to miss it. That's what I want. I want to be with those friends. I want to be doing these things. It's all around us. It's all around us. So how do we put an end to this covetousness? There's only one way, Christ. If our eyes are gazing at these worthless things, then we have to gaze at something that is worthy. We have to gaze at that thing that is most worthy, and that is Christ. So we gaze at his word, we gaze at his statutes, and we read it and we soak it up because we know that Christ is there. And that's where we spend our time. Look at verse 38. Establish your word to your servant. Now we can indulge here in the word of God. He's saying establish it, fulfill it, confirm it in me. He says, I am devoted to fearing you. Turn away my reproach, which I dread, for your judgments are good. Behold, I long for your precepts. Revive me in your righteousness. As I said just a moment ago, that Hebrew term used there for establish, it's not as if we sometimes use the word establish, like this store was established in 1942. That's not what's meant. It's to confirm. It's to fulfill. And he's saying, fulfill, Lord, your word in me. Fulfill your promises in me. And many of those who have gone before that have looked at this verse, they feel quite certain that what is being communicated here is this psalmist is saying, Lord, show me your promises. Establish your promises in me. Fulfill those promises in me. My friends are not the promises of God better than the vain things of this world. Again, our lives will tell us if that's true or not. The world dangles its worldly jewels before our eyes. God's promises are better. Thomas Brooks says, the promises are not only the food of faith, but also the very life and soul of faith. They are a mine of rich treasures, a garden full of the choicest and sweetest flowers. In them are wrapped up all celestial contentments and delights. How do we steer our minds, our hearts, our eyes away from these covetous thoughts. We have to turn them toward Christ. We have to turn them toward the promises of God. This very psalm, in many ways, mirrors that which we see in Jeremiah, that is the promises that we see in Jeremiah. We see again here, teach me the way of your statutes. In Jeremiah 31, 33, the Lord says, I will put my law in their minds and write them on their hearts, for they all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest. In other words, God has made that promise. It is a new covenant promise that those who are called upon his name will know him. And the psalmist here is saying, teach me, Lord, teach me. And the Lord says, I will, I promise. Do we claim that promise as we are in the new covenant? Lord, you have promised this. Teach me, give me understanding again. We see in Jeremiah 32, 39, I will give them one heart in one way that they may fear me forever. What is the fear of the Lord, but proper understanding, proper respect for the Lord. And that's what he's begging for. Again, Bridges says, let me plead. And that word here, I think, is strong. Let me plead that every word may be established in my victory over sin. Has the Lord promised for believers there will be victory over sin? If yes, then plead it, plead it. Has he promised that we will know him more? If yes, then plead it. Bridget says, experiencing his love, and I think this is the key, pray, plead to God, help me love you more. If we love God more, we will not love the world more. It's impossible. If we love God more, if we love Christ more, we can't be covetous because we have everything we need in Christ. And he's saying, experiencing that love of Christ as he's promised it, plead for it, plead for it, and the covetous heart will diminish. My friend, these are the precious promises that starve covetousness. What about that fear as we wrap things up here? What about that fear? Notice again, he, He begs of the Lord to establish the word in his heart, and he says, because I fear you. But notice 39, verse 39, turn away my reproach, which I dread, for your judgments are good. Now, what is this then? Does he fear the Lord, or does he fear the reproach? The answer is both. But there has to be a connection here. Does he fear the Lord? Yes. Does he reverence the Lord? Yes, that's what he does. Then how can he fear the reproach of man? Well, the answer to that is he really fears the reproach of God. Look at what he says here. Turn away my reproach, which I dread, for your judgments are good. In other words, Lord, I am following your good judgments. There are those that are persecuting me because I am following your judgments. I hate that. I hate when they persecute you, because when they persecute me, they persecute you. I think here then the focus is not so much just on general persecution, but it's on that reproach to God himself. Do we not then as Christians fear that others, because of our behavior, because of our actions, because of the way we carry ourselves, do we not fear that others will slander God? You know, the worst thing for a Christian should not be that they themselves are persecuted, but that God's name is slandered. And that's what we see here. Turn away that reproach. Lord God, when they slander me, they are slandering you and I despise that. I love you, I fear you, I want to know you. You have experienced it certainly. Those moments when those around you start to speak in slanderous ways toward God, they speak in slanderous ways toward the word of God, What do you do? What do you feel? True Christians feel that. Slander me all you desire, but don't slander my God. Say what you want about me, but don't slander the Word of God. That righteous jealousy of God and His Word, that's what we should have. And we rise up against that. And as we learned this morning, we contend for that. We contend for God, we contend for His Word, and we contend for the faith. Brothers and sisters, do you feel that? Again, the only way that we are to win this war of a covetous heart is not by our own self-effort. It will get us nowhere. It's that we turn our hearts and minds and our eyes toward Christ Jesus, His Word, We see this in the closing verse. Behold, I long for your precepts. Revive me in your righteousness. All of those petitions that we just talked about earlier, teach me, help me to understand, Lord, make me walk in those paths. All of those promises which the Lord has given us will be useless. unless the Lord revives our hearts. And so the last pleading is, Lord, please revive our hearts that we might know you, that we might feel you, that we might desire you. Friends, if you're here tonight and you have not bowed the knee to Christ, I have no doubt you have a covetous heart, but I have even more doubts that that covetous heart will ever, ever be altered. You will live and die without Christ, just coveting the things of the world without hope. But here the psalmist says, revive me. It's a simple prayer. But that prayer is the only prayer that will take you from a covetous, sinful heart to one that desires the Lord. Lord, revive me. Christians here tonight, we must be honest, right? The Lord has called us. We are his. Yes, we desire him, but we know that things in our lives have kept us from desiring him and loving him as we should. Those worldly desires, the covetousness, And if we let those things brood, if we let those gates take those things in, it will deaden our souls. So what do we do as Christians? It's the same plea. Lord, revive me. Revive me. So the last question is exactly where we started. What do you desire most? Is it Christ? Is it the world? And before you answer, ask the Lord to reveal that to you. Is that true? If I say that Christ is my foremost desire, Lord, is that true? Or am I putting on a facade? If it's not true, then we need to repent today. Lord, make yourself the supreme desire of my heart that it may be for all of us this evening. Let's pray. Lord God, we thank you. Lord God, I thank you. Between these muddled words of my own, I pray that your word went forth. Lord, we indeed have this virus, this sickness, this sin sickness that affects our hearts so deeply, that covetous nature that keeps telling us that we need more, we need more, we need more. But what we need more of is you. Help us, Lord, we need more of you. Without you, without more of you, we we will increase our covetousness. But Lord, change our hearts, save us, save us, cleanse us from this covetous sin. Lord, those that are here tonight that have not bowed the knee to you, Lord, this evening, please show them their sin of covetousness. And draw them to yourself that they might repent of it. and thus begin that walk to you, Lord, that path, that desire to walk in your statutes. And for us as Christians, Lord, likewise, help us to identify our covetous hearts and repent of it and then run harder after you. Lord, all of this to your praise and most glorious name, we do pray, amen. Let's close out our time of worship together.