You can take your Bibles and turn to Psalm 119. All right, you can do that. I've actually got to clean up a little mess I left from last night. I was giving you seven terms out of Psalm 119 that were used for the scripture or the Bible. Someone approached me after the service and said, I only got six of them. I said, that's because I only gave you six of them. So I gave him the seventh one. And then somebody approached me and said, I came in just a little bit late, so I missed the first two. So I gave him the first one, and I gave him the second one. He said, well, I have that one. And I said, you're missing the seventh one, because I didn't give you that one. And to be honest, I recognize that. I was preaching along, I gave you the first six, I got to preaching. When I looked back down in my notes, I said, I missed that one. And in a split second, I decided, well, I think I'm gonna go on rather than go back. And I got caught, and that's a good thing. Amen. How many of you noticed that? I'm just interested. All right, several of you did. Yeah. The seventh one is judgments. Judgments. God has spoken formally. So we got that cleared up tonight. And I was just, I was encouraged by the fact that people, there were some folks that were listening close enough to catch that. Had a great day today, hope that you did. And we're actually gonna spend some time here in the first eight verses of Psalm 119 tonight. It just seemed very fitting to do that. I really struggled trying to go past the first eight verses and pick up somewhere a little later. It may well be that going forward this week as you pray for me and I seek God's direction that we may jump over some of them and go to some different things. But for tonight, we're gonna be in the first eight verses. And we're gonna talk about the seeking of the spiritual man out of these first eight verses. And so I'd like for us to have some prayer and just again commit our time to the Lord this evening. Our Father, we're grateful that we have you in our lives and we're thankful that that's been made possible by the sacrifice of your son, Jesus. We're thankful that we have your word before us. We have our Bibles open tonight. And Lord, we can have the expectation that you will minister to us and speak to us. I pray, Father, that you would just equip me and help me, Lord, to be the instrument in your hand that could effectively and faithfully communicate the things that would be helpful for us tonight. And Lord, I pray that our hearts would be open and receptive. Thank you for those who have made the commitment to be here this evening. And just pray, Lord, that in it all, that your son Jesus might be exalted, that we would be humbled before him, and that we would be changed a little more into his image. Help us, Lord, truly help us to be the spiritually-minded people that you would have us to be. And we'd be very grateful for your help in that regard. And we ask these things in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. Well, I think when we come to Psalm 119, we do have laid before us in a practical expression the picture of a man of whom it could be said, as the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee. I think that's what we're seeing in Psalm 119 is David pours out his heart before God and expresses his spirit and his attitude toward the Word of God. He even expresses his, his lack and his lack of sufficiency to be everything that he wanted to be in respect to the Word of God. And he's just grateful that God is in his life and that God is present and that that has primarily been the occasion of the influence of God's Word in his life. Psalm 119, and I think I may have mentioned this last night, really I've come to look at it as kind of an informal prayer. It is, in practically every way, the expression of a spiritually minded man concerning his relationship to the Word of God, and by nature of that, even his relationship to God Himself. It's as though we have presented to us the secret journal of a spiritual man, and quite frankly, and I'm sure all of you would agree with this, we're very fortunate to have it. Because again, although He does not necessarily give us commands about how we ought to be engaged with the Word of God, The example that's set before us here as David is interacting with God and his own thoughts about the Word of God, I think it certainly sets an example for us for the kinds of things that we could look for in our own heart and just say, am I like this? Are these the kinds of feelings that I have for the Word of God? Is this where I'm at in my life as it relates to the Word of God and everything that may be going on in our lives at any given time? And you know, pretty early on in this series when I was preaching it back home, it dawned on me, and so I'm just gonna kind of ask the question tonight, what was the extent of David's Bible? What did he really have available to him? I mean, when I use the term Bible here tonight, we think about Genesis to Revelation. And probably our minds typically lean to emphasize the New Testament. That's probably appropriate. But all of this that David is saying about the Word of God, he didn't have most of that. I don't know maybe exactly, but I have a pretty good idea that he probably definitely had Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. He did have those five. He likely had Joshua. He likely had judges, and he likely had Ruth. Once you get beyond that, you're in 1 Samuel, and pretty quickly the narrative of David's life begins to be picked up and carried forward. And so certainly he had none of that. He was living that. He didn't have the Psalms. Maybe there were a few that he had, but certainly didn't have all of them. He wrote a good number of them. That means he didn't have any of Chronicles or Kings. He didn't have Proverbs. How many of you love Proverbs? Boy, don't we just find everything we need there. He didn't have that. He didn't have the prophets of the Old Testament. And maybe even more to the point, he didn't have any of the New Testament. He didn't have any of the Gospels. He didn't have Romans. He didn't have Galatians. He didn't have Ephesians. He didn't have Colossians. He didn't have any of those books. So the expression he uses here is in the absence of all of those books that we hold dear and typically draw a great deal of our strength from. I've never heard, I don't think very many people say, Leviticus is my favorite book in the whole Bible. Or Deuteronomy. Genesis, there's some narrative there and there's some practical things there. There really isn't all of those books. But he didn't, that's what David had. That was the extent. And when you read through Psalms and you realize he's saying these things about the Pentateuch and maybe Joshua and maybe just, quite frankly, when I realized that, I was ashamed of myself. When I realized how much revelation I have, and how it's very easy for me to fall short of where David was at in his love for the Word of God. I mean, I have Romans. I have Ephesians. I have Hebrews. And I'm not saying those books are more important. I'm just saying we have the full revelation of God And yet if we're not careful, we will struggle rising to the level of spiritual mindedness that David is expressing throughout this chapter with Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy as the basis of his Bible. It's probably worth thinking about that. When we get to these first eight verses and the idea of the seeking of a spiritual man, I really considered the fact of just going past the first eight verses and I just couldn't get peace about that and I think it's due to your prayers. But really when I think about these first eight verses, the first stanza sets the tone really for the whole composition here. If you move past that, then a lot of the rest of it won't have the foundation and I think the basis that it needs. In fact, the very first verse very directly places before us the key that I think unlocks the hopes and aspirations of men everywhere. Those hopes and aspirations are communicated basically in one word, blessed. And in fact, Psalm 119 opens with the word blessed. There in Psalm 119 in verse 1, the Bible says, blessed are the undefiled. And then we don't even get past verse 2 before we find the word again when he says, blessed are they that keep his testimonies. So the real question before us tonight is how do we lay hold of that blessed state? And I think at least at bare minimum from these eight verses, it's by being undefiled. It's by walking in the law of the Lord. In fact, as you go down through these first eight verses, there's something that I noticed about this. In verse 1, he makes reference to the way. Then you get down to verse three and he makes reference to his ways. And then in verse five, he makes reference to my ways. And so there's a sense in which all eight verses are kind of structured around the ways that we take and God's way and what is the right way. And really everybody wants to know that, don't they? It's really in knowing the right way that we are able to be spiritually minded and to be able to enjoy the fruit of life and peace as God intended it to be. I think if His ways become my ways, if His ways become our ways, then I will find myself walking in the right way, amen? I mean, that's just gonna be the case in our lives. The law indicates that God spoke directly, the testimonies that He spoke confidently, the precepts that He spoke carefully, the statutes that He spoke permanently, the commandments that He spoke, that He spoke authoritatively, and the judgments, number seven, that He spoke formally. It's probably worthy of note that of those seven terms used to denote the scripture, in the first eight verses, The six of those seven terms are used. The only one that's not used in the first eight verses is the term word. And we get no further than verse nine before that term comes up when he says, wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word. So in the first nine verses, we have all seven of those terms being used. I pointed out in my previous sermon, and I think it's worth remembering this kind of going forward, that Psalm 119 does not tolerate a generic term for the Bible. I think the Holy Spirit's desire here through the pen of the Apostle Paul is for the purpose that we might contemplate the diversity and the depth of Scripture, and that we'll never find ourselves any place in life, we'll never find ourselves facing any kind of circumstances whether it's a great victory, a great joy, or a great tragedy and a great difficulty and tribulation where God's Word is not fitting, where God's Word does not have help, does not have encouragement, does not have edification for us. Verse 2 reveals that the blessedness comes to the man that seeks Him with the whole heart. We spent just a brief time last night kind of going through the verses in Psalm 119 where that term, the whole heart, is used. And it seems as though the rest of the psalm makes it quite evident that seeking Him is an exercise that is done in the context of Scripture. That's ultimately how we seek God. There's no way to really know Him better. There's no way to really understand God better and understand what He's trying to do in our life than spending time in the Word of God and doing so with our whole heart. So what about this matter of the seeking of the spiritually minded? In verses 1 through 3, I see the happiness of those that seek Him. And the first thing I note right here at the outset in verse 1 is that they will be happy in their walk. I'm using the word happy. The scripture says in verse 1, blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. And this word blessed is translated from a word that involves the idea that we would normally associate with being happy. In fact, it's kind of the idea of how happy. So it's kind of the idea of the psalmist saying here, how happy are the undefiled in the way? In other words, they have such a level of happiness and such a level of joy that it's pretty hard to express in any quantitative way And you know, I think about blessed are the undefiled in the way, and it's sad, and it's true in our culture at large, there's no doubt about that, but it can even be true in our own lives, and it's sad how people are looking for happiness, and they're looking for it in all the wrong places. And that's why we can find ourselves going from thing to thing, to event to event, from relationship to relationship, thinking the next thing's gonna bring us happiness, the next thing's gonna bring us joy, and we always end up disappointed. because ultimately our happiness is going to be because we are walking and we're undefiled in the way. People pursuing happiness are doing all the wrong things. And it's sad when you look at our people as the American people and all the things that they're giving their heart and their life to, and it's really not creating the happiness that they want. Someone can go out and buy a boat and they think, well, if I get that boat, I'll be happy, but it won't be long before they want a bigger boat. They go out and buy a car and say, if I just have that car, I'd be happy. It's not going to be long before they're not satisfied with that car anymore. And just on and on we can go. And it's amazing how even this plays out in little things in our life. My wife and I, we have a We kind of jab each other back and forth with this. Both of these things happened a long time ago. It's probably our second child. We were in a store somewhere, we were shopping, and it was basically when those, the harnesses where you put the baby in and it straps over your shoulder and you carry them like that, right? Everybody with me? I don't know if I described that very well, but I think you get the picture. And my wife said, boy, I would love to have one of those. And I said, I don't think you would use it. She said, no, I'd love to have one. I just make it so much easier. It'd make me happy. Right? So we bought it. And she hardly ever used it. Sometime around that time, it was probably a little later than that, I don't know, whatever our car had in it to play music was outdated. And it was one of those transitions where they made a thing where you could put what they were using at the present time in that, and then slide it into the thing that was outdated, and you could play the music you already had. Is everybody kind of... Okay. So I said, boy, we need one of those. That'll make me happy. Now, be mindful here tonight. We never necessarily say, this will make me happy. but that's really the root of it. This will make me happy. So we bought that, and guess what? It didn't make me happy. We didn't use it that much. The sound quality, the car didn't have very good sound quality to begin with, and that certainly didn't help it any. It's just amazing. And listen, probably, I'm just gonna go out on a limb here and say, probably all of you could go to your homes and find something that you just had to have, thought, boy, if I have that, I'll be happy. And you got it, and you're not happy. And in fact, it may have actually been a source of frustration. Sometimes that even ends up being the case. So people really are, and even we do it. It may not be that we're looking necessarily to sinful things or ungodly things to make us happy. That's probably pretty unlikely, but we can find ourselves falling prey to looking to the things of the world to bring us happiness. And at the end of the day, that's not gonna be what takes place. Instead of doing things that make for happiness, they often, the world does for sure, and I've even seen many believers do this, they often engage in behavior and attitudes that ensure unhappiness. Blessed are the undefiled in the way. That is, those that are without blemish and without spot. Well, just as a matter of standing, that requires that we be saved, right? We've got to be saved if we're not going to have any spot or any blemish before God. But I think the psalmist is driving at something a little more practical here, and the fact that what our standing is in Christ ought to be represented in the life that we're living. and that we're living a life that's not defiled. Happiness is, as I've often said in my own church, is directly tied to holiness. I believe that because I think the Bible teaches that, and it communicates that to us, but I've been alive now for 59 years, or 58 actually, not 50, let me make, 58. Don't let the beard fool you, it's only been 58 years. And I know by experience, when I am living wholly, I am more happy than when I have defilement in my life. You say, preacher, you have defilement in your life? I'm in the flesh. Come on. I would love to be always pure, always doing the right thing, always making the right decisions, always having the right attitude, but impurity and defilement can creep in. But I'm never happy when that's the case. Even if I feel justified in it, I'm never happy because I know it's impurity. Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord. These two things go together. Being undefiled is not a cause, listen to me, being undefiled is not a cause, it's an effect. Being undefiled is because we are walking in the law of the Lord. That's the way we achieve purity in our lives. The cause is walking in the law of the Lord. You know, really, I don't probably think tonight that I need to convince anyone that walking in the law of the Lord will produce a life that is undefiled. And it will always do that. It will do that without fail. So really think about what's being communicated here. How happy is the man that walks in the law of the Lord? Because you know, the minute we hear law, our commandment, all of us have a little bit of a rebellious streak in us. And when things are being required of us, there's a tendency to bristle against that. We don't take joy necessarily in that. And yet the psalmist is saying a spiritually minded man, he's going to be walking in the law of the Lord, and as a result, he's going to be undefiled. And that's the man that's going to be blessed. I think the fact of the matter is, the closer we live to Scripture, the happier we'll be. Just day in and day out. The more we can be saturated with the Word of God in our life, the happier we'll be. The closer we live to Scripture, the closer we'll be to the Lord of the Scripture. Listen, folks, and probably most of you here tonight know this, but we need to be reminded of it. You can't walk with the Lord unless you're spending time in the Scripture. You've got to be engaged with it. There's no way to be fellowshipping with Him and communicating with Him and interacting with Him unless we're spending good, engaged time in the Word of God. The closer we live to Scripture, the farther away we'll be from defilement. They're also happy in heart in verse two. The Bible says, blessed are they that keep his testimonies and that seek him with the whole heart. So again, how happy are they that keep his testimonies? The one thing that we can keep, listen to me. The one thing that we can keep that will produce happiness and people as a rule dismiss this great truth. If I will keep the law of God, if I will keep his testimonies, that's what's going to produce a happy state in my life. But there's lots of other things that we try to keep, and we think if we can keep them, that will produce happiness. But again, as I've already pointed out in the first verse, that oftentimes proves not to be true. Keep is a word that signifies to protect and maintain. So the idea of keeping his statutes is the idea of maintaining them. It's the idea of protecting them. Really at the end of the day, it's the idea of obeying them. I've always found it hard to understand how we could expect to maintain them and keep them if we're not obeying them. I think we can be deluded into believing that it's keeping other things that secure our happiness, but that's a misguided thought. In fact, it says, blessed are they that keep his testimonies and seek him with the whole heart. This word seek is an interesting word as well because it involves the idea of to tread around. It involves the idea of to frequent something. It can even usually be included in the idea of following. And you'll notice here there's a pronoun. and that seek him. So because there's a pronoun, we're gonna back up in the passage and we're gonna back up a little bit in the text and we come to his testimonies. And then we back up a little further in the text and we come to the law of the Lord. So in other words, and that they that seek the Lord with a whole heart. when we're seeking Him with the whole heart. How happy are those that tread about or frequent the Lord, coming to His presence for the purpose of following Him. And you'll know it's interesting, Jesus, when He came on the scene in His public ministry and He was going around to His disciples, what was His injunction to them? Follow me. Come be with me. Come have a close relationship with me. Dwell with me. Assemble with me. And that's the essence of what we find here when it says, and that seek Him with the whole heart. So we walk in His laws. God has spoken to us directly. We keep His testimonies. God has spoken to us confidently, and we do it with the whole heart. There's gotta be wholehearted devotion. Listen, I don't know about you, I don't know about you, but I'm just gonna be honest with you tonight. I struggle sometimes with this. There are a lot of demands made upon us. There are a multitude of distractions. I don't really know if there's more today than there's ever been. I'm not a good judge of that. All I know is that today there are a lot of distractions. And I can find myself going to my Bible and opening my Bible and wanting to get something from God out of it and be distracted by a thousand different things. Come on. I'm weak when it comes to this. And yet the importance of it is significant because it's that very thing and getting something out of it that's gonna make me a spiritually minded man. One thing is for sure, we can approach it and have those struggles and just write that off and convince ourself that it doesn't really matter because it does matter. It does matter. So there's gotta be a wholehearted devotion wholeheartedly keeping his testimonies, wholeheartedly walking in his law. How happy is the man whose whole heart is seeking God in his testimonies and his laws. Verse three, happy in his ways. The Bible says in verse three, they also do no iniquity, they walk in his ways. That's a pretty powerful statement when you think about it. They also do no iniquity. But when you take it in the context of walking in his law, they don't do iniquity. If we're walking in his law, we're not committing iniquity. We only commit iniquity when we're not walking in his law. And I'm sure probably many of us have been saved long enough tonight that know that nothing mars happiness like iniquity. And I don't know, there's a good chance that most of us are, we struggle with that. I mean, really, the Christian life is a struggle. I don't know about you, but I've experienced in my life, you know, I might be struggling with something, and God will give me victory over to finally, and I'll submit myself to Him and humble myself to Him, and God will give me victory. But no sooner do I get victory in one area that God says, and by the way, you might want to give some attention to this. And so in a lot of ways, the struggle just picks up, but it's in another area of life. So there's always struggles going on in the Christian life because there's always upward movement to be had. We can always, as I've been preaching this week, we can always be more spiritually minded. And so when we get to a place where we've had some victory in our life, that's a great thing. That's a great thing to celebrate. That's a great thing to give the Lord honor and glory and praise for, but it's not like he's through with us now. You know, the fact be known, we've probably all got more messes in our life than we could ever understand, and God's revealing it to us a little bit at a time, and giving us the grace to manage those things. Happy in his ways, they also do no iniquity, they walk in his ways. Verse one, he said, walk in the law of the Lord. Our way is undefiled when we walk in his ways. We walk in his ways by walking in the law of the Lord. And how happy is that man? It's a happy day when we're seeking Him with the whole heart. Talk about backsliding a little bit yesterday. I wanna ask you to raise your hand, but if you've been saved any length of time, have you ever been backslidden? And were you happy? Because if you're saved and the Spirit of God is living in you, we can't be happy and be backslidden. These are not things that are really a possibility in the life of the Christian. Verses 4 through 7, I see the desire of those that seek him. Verses 4 and 5, the desire to keep his precepts. Notice, if you will, there in verse 4, thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. So he says, you've commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. So there's that idea of a command again. We're being told, we're being ordered, if you will, we have a charge set in place to keep the commandments of God. And again, the idea of keep here is to hedge about as with thorns. It's the idea of guarding them and protecting them. And God wants us to do that, and God has commanded us to do that very diligently. In fact, you could go back and read, for example, in the book of Leviticus and the book of Deuteronomy, and God is laying out His law before His people. He did that twice in those books. and he lays out his law, and he often encourages them to be diligent in this regard, to be diligent in keeping his law. The idea there is to do it with speed. I don't know about you, but I've noticed in my life, when the Lord reveals something to me, and he deals with my heart about something from his word, if I don't deal with it right then, if I don't take action on it right then, it only becomes harder to do it the next day. Because as long as I'm, as long as I'm, you know, kind of stepping away from it a little bit, I'm creating distance between me and the Lord and it doesn't ever get easier. That's why we've got to do it post haste. When God reveals something to us, when he stirs our heart, if he stirs your heart about something this week or in any service when you're here, act on it that very minute and make your commitments to the Lord. This is the idea of being diligent about these things, to be very fervent about it. You know, God has spoken carefully in his precepts, and as a result of that, he expects us to guard them carefully in our attitudes and behavior. And then he says this, oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. Okay, look what's happening here. He has said, blessed are the undefiled in the way. Verse two, blessed are they that keep his testimonies. Verse three, they also do no iniquity. Verse four, thou has commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. So he's acknowledging all of this, right? Would we be on the same page there? He's acknowledging that these are foundational truths. And then it's as though when he's meditating upon this and he's writing these words, he comes to verse five and says, oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. This word O, it's just the single letter O. It's the idea of would that, would that I would keep thy statutes. It's expressive of grief or surprise. It can be either way. I think probably in this context, it's an expression of grief. Because I think really what's happening here is David is recognizing his own weakness and his own frailty. He knows what is good. He knows what is right. He knows how it's of value to be walking in the law of the Lord, and yet he feels in his own bosom that he's not always doing that with his whole heart. And consequently, he writes, oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. You'll notice it's here where he says, my ways. That's in contrast to verse three, where he had made reference to the Lord's ways. The way we find ourselves in life is going to be entirely dependent upon how successful we are in uniting our ways to his ways, to embracing his ways for our life. Because the Word of God gives us very clear direction about that as we go along in our Christian life, all of it designed to make us spiritually minded. And we've got to be willing to engage that and embrace that. Oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. So David here, having laid out the recipe for true happiness and acknowledging he had been commanded to keep the precepts diligently, And you go through Psalm 119, and right here, for the first time of many in this Psalm, he is expressing an element of frustration, yea, grief even, at not being as faithful in this regard as he would like and needs to be. So let me just ask you, have you read your Bible today? Because that matters. And it's easy, and we've probably all done this. Well, it's just one day. I'll get back to it tomorrow, and hopefully we do that. But we probably all know how easy it is for one day to turn into two days. And two days to turn into a week. And if we're not careful, before we realize it, there's been several days passed before we've spent time in the Word of God. And it's gonna be very difficult to be spiritually minded under those circumstances. It's very easy to get lazy about this. It's very easy to be saved long enough and come to church all the time and just kind of float along in life and keep putting up appearances But really, we're not spiritually minded. We're not filling our heart and mind with the Word of God and with spiritual things. And in the context of that, we're in the process of backsliding, whether we feel the reality of that or not. And you know, I don't know, I've taken, I've done a lot of things over the years when it comes to my Bible time, my quiet time, whatever phrase you would use to designate that. And I've done a lot of different things over the years, but one thing I've been doing recently over the last year and a half or two years is I always have pen and paper in hand. And there's a couple of things about that. One is it helps me read slower because when I have paper and pen in hand, I'm actually looking for God to give me something. And I'm gonna be honest with you, there have been some days where I've read what I had, in my habit for this year, I've read what God has for me that day and I get to the end of it and I look at the page and it's blank. And when I see that, one reason it helps me is because I say, okay, something's not right here. And it can't be God. It can't be His Word. So clearly when I sat down to read my Bible, I was not in a frame of mind to really get something from God. And another thing I've done, and this might be especially important for preachers, I don't know, but when I write down something that God gives me in His Word, I have recently been striving to use the pronoun I. I need to do this. I should have this attitude. I should have this, because I think preachers run a real risk because our life is in the word of God that it becomes a text we study to tell other people what to do. And we don't, we're not spending time in the Bible for ourselves and to have God minister to us, not for the purpose of ministering to others, but for me. We all need to do that. Oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. Because that really is where we come to know the Lord. And you know, when I'm having my quiet time, when I'm reading my Bible in the morning, it's a great thing when God really stirs my heart and speaks to my heart and gives me something to think about all day. And you know what? On those days, on those days, I feel more spiritually minded than on days where that does not occur. Doesn't that just make good sense? So that's really what we ought to be striving for. In verse six, I see the desire to respect His commandments. Look in verse six. Then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all thy commandments. So He's just expressed this grief and then He says, then shall I not be ashamed. This phrase is really connected to the following phrase instead of the previous sentence. The point is, David is saying, I'm not going to be disappointed. I'm not going to have the grief that at times I find myself having. In contrast to that, I'm going to know true happiness. But look what he says here, then shall I not be ashamed when? In other words, David understands there's a condition that's going to keep him from being disappointed in his walk with God and in his being spiritually minded. And that was going to be when I have respect unto all thy commandments. This word respect involves the idea of to look intently at. It means to regard with pleasure or favor. And we ought to come to the word of God with pleasure, amen? Listen, folks, listen to me. I just don't think any of us are that much different when it comes down to it. And when we open our Bibles to spend time with God and we're not taking pleasure in that, genuine pleasure in it, then there's something spiritually not right in our lives. And we need to ask God to reveal that to us and to help us with that because we ought to be coming to the Word of God excited about what He wants to reveal to us and how He wants to stir our heart on that day. I mean, I just think we all wrestle with the flesh. We just all wrestle with the flesh. when I have respect unto all thy commandments. And I always like the word all in scripture, because I think when the scripture says all, it means all. So all thy commandments. You know, if we're not careful, we can look at the scripture as a buffet. And we're just going down the line and say, well, that sounds pretty good. That sounds like that might work. I don't know. That doesn't sound like that'll work for me. But the reality is it all works for us. Just because we may not understand how it works, you know, that's what faith is all about, amen? It's about reading something in the Word of God and not necessarily understanding what that's going to look like when it plays out in my life. And hey, I got news for you. Every time you obey the Word of God, it may not always make things more pleasant in your life. Sometimes when we obey God's Word, it does create greater difficulty and greater stress, but it's always the right thing to do, and it's always the right path to pursue if we want to be more spiritually minded. Listen, we've got to stop reading the Bible and say, is this good for me? It's all good for us. Every last word of it, all of His commandments, and we need to have respect unto them. In verse 7, there's the desire to learn His righteous judgments. He says in verse 7, I will praise thee with uprightness of heart when I shall have learned thy righteous judgment. This word praise here, it involves the idea literally of to hold out the hand. Webster's defines the word praise as to do honor, to display the excellence of. And so David is Spreading out his heart here and he says, I'm going to praise thee. And he says, I'm gonna do it with uprightness of heart. So again, let's get real about this. How many times have we come to church and hopefully it's not often, but we probably all experienced this before. We've come to church and we've sung the songs and we've listened to the sermon and we've done what we always do, but things aren't right in our heart. Things aren't where they ought to be. And we kind of know it, but it keeps us from responding to the music as we ought to, it keeps us from responding to each other as we ought to, it keeps us from responding to the word of God as we ought to. David said, I will praise thee with uprightness of heart. Listen, we can praise, we can praise, we can do that, we can generate that in the flesh, but that's not what God wants. In fact, you go back to the Old Testament, And you remember by the time you get into the prophets, God is over and over again telling the Jewish people, I'm full up with the sacrifices and the blood of bulls and goats. I've had all I can take of that. Well, why was that? I mean, he commanded them to do that. Why was he full of that? He wanted no more of it. The reason is because they weren't bringing it with the right heart. They weren't bringing it with an uprightness of heart. And so it was all a big hypocrisy. He says, I will praise thee with uprightness of heart. And again, you'll notice the word when, when I have learned thy righteous judgments. This word learned, it's actually a word that means to goad. I read that it actually implies the use of a rod being an oriental incentive. That doesn't sound very pleasant. That's not really the way I want to learn. When I read that, I thought about my, I don't know, it's probably a stereotype of the old schoolmasters. And I had this image of, you know, a disruptive student or a student that wasn't getting his lessons in a timely or prudent fashion. And, you know, you'd see the schoolmaster calling them to the front of the class and laying their hand on the desk or putting their hand out and then wrapping it several times with a ruler. I remember as a, I don't know, I was probably in first or second grade. And I ended up in the principal's office. I don't know why, because I was always a sweet little boy. I don't know why I would have ended up in the principal's office. But I was there for whatever reason. I don't remember now. That was a little while back. So I was sitting in the office outside of hers. Her door was open. And when you're in second or third grade, you hear all kinds of horror stories about the principal's office. So I was able to see through her door and see the bookcase. And on the bookcase, I don't know if this was intentional or just happened to be this way, but there was a baseball bat laying on the shelf. I was like, I'm not ever doing this again. I learned something. No, she didn't use the baseball bat on me. It's amazing how we live in different days today. I mean, this is a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much. If she'd have used the baseball bat on me, I wouldn't have told my parents. Because I'd have got it again when I got home. That's true. This is a true story. I had a third grade teacher who was going out to recess one day. I don't know what I did. I was acting up in line or something. And she grabbed me and shook me. Said, young man, you better straighten up, whatever it was she said. Turned me loose and set me free to go to recess. And that got my attention. I didn't tell my parents that happened either. Because I would have got a spanking. We do live in a different world. Neither one of those things were pleasant. One of them because of just my imagination running wild as a little boy, the other because the shaking itself wasn't that pleasant. She seemed like a terror to me at that point. But I learned a lesson. You know, when he says, when I have learned thy righteous judgments, Sometimes God, if I can use this for my illustration, takes the baseball bat to us. Or at least he dangles it in front of us. Let us draw our own conclusion. Sometimes God shakes us. Now, I've lived long enough, I've been a Christian long enough to know that there are some things I've learned in my life and some changes that have come about in my life. that likely would have never occurred unless the Lord had shaken me. And I'll tell you right now, it was not a pleasant thing to go through. I don't think back on those occasions and those things that have transpired, and I don't really get any joy out of them in the sense of the experience and the pain that was associated with it. But when I realized, man, in retrospect, God used those things to help me be more spiritually minded, to help me be more like Christ, to help me be more of what I ought to be, you can learn to appreciate those kinds of things. It doesn't mean you ever have to look back and say, boy, I loved that experience, but it does mean there was value in that. It's not like that was just something that happened and was bad and was terrible and horrible and that was the end of the story. No, there was value in that. That's what David is saying here when he says, I will praise thee with uprightness of heart when I shall have learned thy righteous judgments. When you've goaded me, when you've brought things into my life to make me learn your righteous judgments, he says, I'm gonna praise you. I'm gonna praise you for that. Listen, that is the essence of a spiritually minded man. Carnal men will never do that. Then in verse eight, lastly, the resolve of those that seek him. He says, I will keep thy statutes. Oh, forsake me not utterly. Well, he says, I will keep thy statutes. This is in response to verse five. Look back there and you'll see where David had written, oh, that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes. See that? There's an anguish there. There's a desire there. There's a feeling of not always rising to the occasion of falling short And then when he says, then he says in verse six, then shall I not be ashamed when I have respect unto all thy commandments, I will praise thee with uprightness of heart when I shall have earned thy righteous judgments. And the conclusion of the whole matter is, I will keep thy statutes. I will do that. Listen folks, this is a renewable commitment. Amen? Every morning we can get up and say, I will keep thy statutes. Maybe we struggle today, but we can leave here tonight saying, I will keep thy statutes. It is a renewable commitment because at bare minimum, we are ever learning according to verse seven, and we must be forever committing ourselves to the proposition, I will keep thy statutes. So we open our Bibles in the morning or at lunch or in the evening, whenever we read our Bible, whenever we've chosen to spend time with the Lord, and we open them with a heart and a spirit that's saying, I will keep thy statutes. I will do that. And then he says this, oh forsake me not utterly. This is the second time the expression oh is used. So there's a lot of emotion here and passion even in these first eight verses. But now the oh is oh forsake me not utterly. It's as though, and I think this is an important thing. I'm glad the sermon is ending on this note. It is though David is mindful that he can only keep the Lord's statutes if the Lord will not forsake him. That's the only way he's gonna be able to do this. And it really is, isn't it? It really is the only way. We can make commitment after commitment, but unless the Lord comes to our aid and helps us in this endeavor of spiritual mindedness, we're gonna find ourselves failing more often than not. David recognized that he needed the Lord to furnish the grace and power to act upon his spiritual desires. Because you know, at the end of the day, it's not good enough just to have the desire. We've got to be empowered to do it. And we can't generate that in the flesh. God has to be the one that's promoting that in us. In fact, he says, he says, Oh, forsake me not utterly. This word forsake means to loosen or to relinquish. The fact of the matter is, is that David didn't want the Lord to loosen his hold on him. even though he had had to learn the statutes, right? He had been prodded. He had experienced some difficult things in his life so he could learn what he needed to do. And even in spite of that, he says, don't forsake me. I want you to not loosen your hold on me. Don't permit me to do otherwise than to keep your precepts. Don't relinquish me to my own ways, but give me grace to walk in your ways. You know, how happy will the man be whom the Lord keeps in the right way? You wanna know one of the worst things that God can do to us? is let us have our own way. Because almost inevitably we'll make a mess of things. We should covet and we should desire that he had not loosened his hold on us. Lord, when I get out of the way, when I am moving in the opposite direction of spiritual mindedness, Lord, don't let me go. Don't just let me keep going that way. Don't let me keep walking away from you. Don't let me keep reading my Bible and not getting anything out of it. Don't keep letting me sit in church service after service after service and not being stirred by the word of God. God, don't let me go. Amen. Because you can backslide sitting in a church pew. Most everyone does. It says, forsake me not utterly. It's interesting that word utterly is translated from the same word as diligently in verse four. And it's the idea against speedily. It's the idea of very urgent or eager, fervent. So it's as though David is saying, Lord, Lord, just be very eager to hold on to me so that I can be very eager to hold on to thy precepts. And at the end of the day, that's what we all need. We can get to the end of this week and say, Lord, I want to be more spiritually minded. I want to be striving for that. But we've got to ultimately say, Lord, don't let me go. When I step out of the way, even the slightest diversion, Lord, I want you to correct me. I desire your correct. Because you know, when you're going down a straight path and you just venture off a little bit, it may not seem that bad, but if you continue in that direction, you know what happens, right? You just keep getting farther and farther. And you know, it's been my observation that most people, it's been true in my life and others that I've pastored and watched, it's been my observation that people usually fall away from the Lord just a little bit at a time, a little bit here, a little bit there. And it's usually even, it's imperceptible to a lot of people around them oftentimes, and certainly oftentimes imperceptible to themselves. So tonight we've considered the seeking of the spiritual man. And I think we had the chance to see the happiness of the man who seeks Him, the desires of the man who seek Him, and the resolve of the man who seeks Him. Even as I preach it, I say, Lord, I want to be more spiritual. I don't want to live days. I don't want to live hours with unspiritual thoughts. I want to be filled with your word. I think it was Spurgeon that said, I wanna have so much Bible in me that when they cut me, I bleed Bible. Because you know what, if you're doing that, you're probably gonna be a spiritually minded man, and you're probably gonna have a close walk with the Lord. Brother Hammett.