Well, good morning, everybody. A warm welcome to you all. It's great to see you here smiling again this Sunday morning. And if you're here visiting with us, welcome along. It's great to have you here with us as we worship the name of our Lord and our King together. May his name be praised this morning. I don't have too many announcements, just so there'll be some tea and coffee served after the worship service. So if you're here visiting with us, you're welcome to stay for that time of fellowship. And then this morning, so as you can see, I'll be leading the worship service. And then we've got our brother and pastor, Andrew Young, who will be preaching for us this morning. We'll be opening up the word, looking at Psalm 1. and seeing how that can apply to us as we walk in the Lord's ways. So our call to worship this morning, the Lord's call to worship for us this morning is taken from Psalm 145, and we'll be reading verses eight through to 12. So Psalm 145, eight to 12, and it says there, The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made. All your work shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you. They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. This is the God that we have come to worship this morning. He's gracious, he's merciful, slow to anger, abounding in love, good to all, and merciful over all that he has made. So remember these things as we praise our Lord this morning. I'll now lead you in a time of prayer, shall we pray? Our gracious Lord and Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can come together into your presence this morning and to praise your name, to bring praise and thanksgiving before you. Lord, you are a holy and a righteous and an almighty God. And as we've just read, you are also gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love. And we'd like to praise your name this morning because of who you are, and Lord, because you are worthy of our worship and our praise. And we thank you, Lord, for the grace that you have shown to us in our lives, that you have rescued us from our sin and from our sinful way of life and have brought us into your light through the blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus. And so as we come before you this morning and sing of your righteousness, meditate on your wondrous works, giving thanks to you Lord for all that you have done, we pray that you will be directing our hearts that this place may be filled with songs of praise, and that all that is done this morning may praise and exalt and glorify you. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Now have our first song. Most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days, almighty victorious, thy great name we praise. Can you please stand for our first song, Immortal Invisible, God Only Wise. ♪♪ Immortal in nature, the one only wise. Enlightened, accessible, hid from our eyes. Most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days. Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise. Unresting, unhastening, and silent as night, No wanting, no wasting, thou rulest in might. Thy justice, like mountains, lies soaring above, Like clouds which are fountains of goodness and love. To all life Thou gavest, to both praise and song, In all life Thou gavest, Thou true light of hope. We bostom and forage, and sleep on the tree, And wither and perish, but not change its heat. Great Father of glory, pure Father of light, Thine angels adore Thee, O filling their sight. O praise we for render, O help us to see, Tis only the splendor of Thy highest need. Immortal, invisible, glory wise, enlightened, Please be seated. Shall we now come before our Lord in a time of prayer. ♪♪ ♪♪ you you you So we're now going to have two songs. So first of all, we'll sing As The Deer. So I'll get the music team to come up the front. So As The Deer, and then it is Well With My Soul. So can you please stand for that? As the deep reds fall, the waters of my soul longs after you. You are all that my heart desires and I long to worship. of my heart, desire and I long to worship you. I want you more than gold or silver, only you can satisfy. ♪ My spirit healed ♪ ♪ You alone are my foster desire ♪ ♪ And I long to worship you ♪ ♪ For my friend and you are my brother ♪ ♪ Even though you are far away ♪ than any other, so much more than in anything. You alone are my strength, my shield. To you alone may my spirit yield. You alone are my cause, desire, and I Children, you may now go and get your worksheets, and the rest of us will sing it as well with my soul. And please remain standing after for the dedication of the offering. Thank you. When peace like a river attendeth my way, When sorrows like steep pillars fall, Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. Those days ensure nothing but trials, That Christ has regarded my helplessness and has shed his own blood for my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul, with my soul. I sing o'er the plains of this glorious land. I sing of him, one and the one. His hand to the cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. It is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. Oh, lead me in Christ, lead me in Christ. The bank shall be mine, for in it as in mine Thou wilt whisper Thy peace to my soul. It is well with my soul. The sign of the rain is upon us. It is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my soul. Lord, face the day, when my faith shall be sighed, the clouds be rolled back as a scone. The drum shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, even so in His dwelling place. Please remain standing. Shall we pray? Our Father in heaven, we come again before you this morning. Lord, we present these offerings to you and we pray, Lord, that these gifts may have been given with thankful and willing hearts. Lord, we thank you for the many ways in which you bless us and we pray that as we return a portion back to you, that you'll use it as you please for your glory. Lord, grant wisdom as these funds are used. May they be used for the furtherance of your kingdom and the glory of your name. May they reach those who are in physical need, that they may be provided for. And for the mission work that is supported by these funds, we pray that it may bring many into a saving knowledge of you. Bless our pastors, Lord, as they serve among us and as they are supported by these funds. We pray that you will use it to provide for them and their families so that they can serve you in full-time ministry. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated. I'll now ask a brother, Andrew Young, to come forward and he'll preach. It's a joy to be with you this morning. I understand there's a television program, A Game of Two Halves. I've never watched it, but I have heard about it. But I think my life is very much a game of two halves at the moment. I'm half in Rotorua. I'm half up here in Auckland still and in America and in Africa. but it's really great to be here. So joy, joy to hear you singing. I've been involved in small church plants for much of my life in ministry and one of the things we struggle with in small church plants is singing and music. We tend to scrabble and grope for that and what a blessing it is to be here with you this morning to hear the body of God's people joining in a song like we have just sung. O Lord, haste the day when faith is turned to sight. I wonder if you can say that this morning in your heart, genuinely. Come Lord Jesus, come. Haste in the day when our faith will be turned to sight. And we behold him coming in the clouds with the angels of God in great glory. No longer a babe in a manger, but King of Kings, Lord of Lords, full of glory and full of splendor. Are you ready for him? Are you waiting for Him? That's the great question that we all need to face and answer. Well, we're going to look this morning at Psalm 1. And if you have a Bible with you, please turn with me to that Psalm. Psalm 1. I suspect that there are some of you here this morning that will know it off by heart. Our brother Eric. From Booker Coey is with us, with his wife and family. Eric, you can probably stand up and recite it for us. I won't ask you to do that. But it is one of the portions of scripture that's good to have engraved in our hearts. Let's read together from the Word of God, Psalm 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, 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 its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like the 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. Let's pray, shall we, and ask that God would make his word living and powerful. Our God and Father, how we thank you, even as we begin a new year, that we have your precious word to guide us, a lamp to our feet, a light to our path. The psalmist tells us that you have shown us the path of life. And we pray that as we turn to your word afresh this morning, that the Holy Spirit will take these pages, take these verses, take these words and make them words of light and life to us. We do thank you that our Lord Jesus has walked this way before us, and that even as we come and contemplate how this speaks to our souls today, help us to know that we have a brother and a friend if we know him. You are my brother and friend we have sung this morning. Lord what an amazing reality this is that king of kings and lord of lords stoops to be the brother and a friend of men and women who love him. So come shine your truth upon our path that we may walk into this year in your grace with a great measure of fresh confidence hope and joy we ask it in Jesus name amen. Well, over these next two months, January and February and Rotorua, we're looking at a number of the Psalms. We're not going to look at them consecutively. But we're looking at the different types of Psalms. The Psalms are praises and prayers that arise out of the ordinary life of God's people in the Older Covenant era. And there are Psalms and songs that arise out of times of deep distress, perplexity, even times of frustration. Next week, God willing, I'll be preaching on Psalm 44, and Psalm 44 contains some bold, almost effrontery, where it says, Awake, O God! That's the psalmist, how real, how authentic and genuine they are in their life with God. So these Psalms help us live life with God. They help us to know how to pray. They help us to know how to walk and to live. And we do very well to have them deeply engraved into our minds and hearts and sung as well as prayed and read. Now in spite of the fact we're not looking consecutively at the Psalms in Rotorua we are and did begin last week with Psalm 1. And it's appropriate to do that because Psalm 1 opens the doorway to the Psalms. It's classified often as a wisdom psalm. Now, in most cultures, not just in Israel, but in ancient cultures, there's always been a wisdom tradition. Wisdom and wisdom literature is really about the way to live life well. and you find in Egyptian and Sumerian and other kinds of ancient cultures collections of writings and sayings much like the Proverbs of Solomon which try to capture the key elements of how to live. Now Psalm 1 is a wisdom psalm because it sets before us two ways of life and ultimately the way of blessedness or well-being. It's supremely relevant for us to look at a psalm like this as we stand on the verge of a new year. I know that for some people, moving from December the 31st to January the 1st is just waking up to a new day and it's just life as usual. But I was reminded even in the story of creation in Genesis 1 that God put the lights and the skies, et cetera, for times and for seasons. And God has ordered life for us in structures and week, days and nights and in weeks and in months and in seasons and years. So it is appropriate for us to recognize pulses and order and structure in life and to seize an opportunity at the beginning of the year to refocus our thoughts and to refocus on how by God's grace we seek to live in the year ahead. Psalm 1 provides a timeless way of ordering our lives under God in order to make the very most of this year. It's a wonderful, wonderful psalm. And I want us to look at three things as we gaze at it together. Firstly, what we see here is the way of well-being in the eyes of God. Secondly, we see the form or shape of a well-formed life. And then thirdly, we see the ultimate destiny here of lives well and poorly lived. So think of these words. There is a way set before us here. There is a shape or form or fruit of a life. And then finally, there is an ultimate destiny. Let's have a look firstly at the way, the way of life. The psalm begins with a crucial word, at least in our English translations, blessed. Now some more contemporary translations translate that word blessed as happy. You find it, for example, at the beginning of the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five. And many will say happy is the man or the woman or the boy or the girl. Now happiness is too shallow a word to capture really what this term blessed means. We find it emerging even in the first chapter of the Bible again. You recall that after God had created the sea creatures and the birds, we're told, for the first time, and God blessed them. And then the same thing happens after he created humans. And the third thing, after he had set apart the seventh day, we're told he sanctified it, he set it apart as holy, and he blessed it. Now ultimately that idea of blessing in the scriptures is to have God's favor towards us, to have his face towards us. R.C. Sproul, a reformed theologian known to many people, had an interesting observation on the Aaronic blessing. That is you find in Numbers chapter 6 how the priests in Israel were to dismiss the congregation of God's people and they were to say the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace. Now Sproul points out that really the parallelism and that blessing helps us to understand the Lord bless you is really expanded and explained by the Lord being gracious, the Lord making his face to shine upon you, the Lord lifting up his countenance upon you, and that biblically is what a truly blessed person is. A truly blessed person's not necessarily a wealthy person. A handsome person, a pretty or a beautiful person, often say, oh, you're blessed with such good looks. Friends, that's not how the Bible uses the term blessed. A blessed person is a person who walks under the revealed shining face of God. God is pleased, God is favoring, God is causing his face to shine upon a person. Friends, I don't know what this year holds for me, neither do you know what it holds for you. Sickness, health, poverty, wealth, or what? We don't know as we stand at the doorway to a new year, but what we do know is there is a way in which we can walk into this year, be it a year of bright sunshine or clouds and rain and despair. There's a way of walking into it with confidence and with joy, and it is to have the blessing and favor of God resting upon you. That is really what counts, in trial or in triumph, to know God is with you and smiling upon you. Now the psalmist goes on to tell us the way of blessedness. And he does it in the way of a contrast. And this is what wisdom literature often does. It sharpens a truth by expressing it both negatively and positively. And that's what here the psalmist does. He begins by telling us the way which is not the way of blessedness. And it says, 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. Now these three terms that are used to describe essentially ungodly, unbelieving people are again Typical of wisdom literature when it talks about walking in the council of the wicked when it talks about the wicked and sinners It's not necessarily referring to people who are as evil as it's possible to be but it is using a class of people who are godless who are ungodly and And when it talks about sinners, it's talking about people whose characteristic behavior is in rebellion to the law of God. And when it speaks about scoffers, it's talking about people who have become hardened in their skepticism and in their unbelief to the point where they mock and ridicule not only God, but people who walk in his ways. And so the Psalmist here recognizes that there are people who are without God in the world and separated from the life of God in the world and whose ways are fundamentally against God. He talks about the counsel of the wicked, that is their wisdom, their insight, their philosophies, their outlook on life. He talks also about the way of sinners, which is the patterns of sinful behavior that people without God get into. And he talks about the mockery of those who are skeptics speaking against God. There is a progression of thought here. For thought of the realm of ideas, counsel to the way of life and ultimately to this hardened rejection of God and the mockery of all that's true and right. And the psalmist says this, you do not find the way of blessedness in conjunction with these three types of people and that kind of lifestyle. That is not the way of blessedness. Rather, he says, The way of blessedness is this. It is in those who delight in the law of the Lord, or Yahweh, and on his law meditate day and night. Now this person, or the people who are walking in the way of blessedness here, you see, do three things. Firstly, they recognize the Lord. That is a feature of Israel's wisdom literature. You see, the wisdom of the world, and I was in Whitcalls this past week, and I happened to walk past a self-help or do it and self-improvement kind of, and there you find all these books with all the advice on how to get rich, how to be happy, and how to make friends and influence people and so on, and God is not in all their thoughts. In Israel's wisdom literature, however, there is the fundamental conviction that God exists. And secondly, that God has a will and a way. And thirdly, that the very beginning of wisdom is to fear God. that is to know him, to reverence him, to honor him and to humble yourself before his word. And so you see here we're told the way of blessedness is firstly to recognize there is the Lord, secondly that he has a law. Now here the law refers not just to the coded law of the Ten Commandments, it really refers to instruction and teaching and revelation. And so it embraces really the whole of God's revealed truth. So there is a God, he has revealed his way, and the way of blessedness, the way to have the favor of God resting upon you and me is to know that law. It is more than simply to know it, it is to delight in it. to recognize these are words of life. You remember what Peter said to Jesus, when in John chapter six, after he had taught the searching words of needing to eat and drink of his body and blood, if you were to have life and many disciples left him, he said to the disciples, his closest group, he said, will you always leave me? And Peter said, to whom shall we go? For you have the words of eternal life. You see, this is what we are to recognize the scriptures are. And when we read here that the person with true well-being, the truly blessed person, delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night, we are not being given a prescription for a law that we must obey grimly rather what's being set before us is our loving gracious merciful God gift giving God and Lord has set before us a way of life. And that way of life is in his word. And those who are wise, and those who would experience the favor and blessing of God upon them, must delight in that word. And must not only delight in it, but meditate on it day and night. I was driving up from Rotorua on Friday and in that two and a half or nearly three hours it took on the busy roads, I was deeply aware again of how important what we allow to settle in our minds is. Martin Luther once said, look, You can't stop birds flying over your head, but you can't stop them nesting in your hair, even when you haven't got much hair for them to nest in. And it occurred to me again how tremendously important it is to be mindful of what we allow to settle and rest in our minds. And here the scriptures are saying, if you want to walk in the way of blessedness, this word of instruction, the commands and teachings of God throughout redemptive history, it is to have those in our minds and thoughts and hearts, not just cursorily read and ticked off. I've got three chapters read this year. Many people have a very meritorious way of thinking, if I read through the Bible, God will bless me. One wise man has said a few verses, well read, carefully absorbed, faithfully practiced, will do you more good than reading 10 times through the Bible in a year. The issue is to receive the word of God, let it seep deeply into your being, change your life. That is the way of blessing being set before us. And that's the challenge. What are you going to let fill your minds this year? What are you going to delight in speaking to one another about? Is it the new car you've got, the fish you've caught, the flowers you've grown, the new dress you have? Is that what absorbs your thinking? Or are you people who recognize this is gold? And this is where we find the wisdom to receive God's favor that will result in us truly being blessed. So that's the way, very, very sharply set before us. Not the way of the world. Not the glossy magazines and the advertising that's set before us and bombards us daily with this is the way of life. This is the way of life. revealed in the scriptures in their totality and demonstrated especially in the life that Jesus lived amongst us. So let's look secondly at the form of a blessed person and we find that in verses three and four. He is like a tree, this is the blessed person, he or she, young or old, he or she is like a tree planted by streams of water that yield its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff that the wind drives away. The psalmist here again uses the sharpness of contrast to drive a truth home. Here he's using two images from life, from agricultural life even, as it lives in that ancient world. He says the difference between these two ways of life, the God-blessed way of life and the way of the fool, is illustrated in the radical sharpness of contrast between a tree planted by streams of water and chaff. Okay, many of you perhaps don't know what chaff is. Some of you youngsters may not know what chaff is. Chaff refers to the husks that surround a cereal grain. I can still remember when I was a youngster, just about as young as some of you youngsters up there. My grandfather bred and raised Clydesdale horses just south of, just near the airport at Dunedin. And I can remember going into his stables and smelling the smell of oats, but also of chaff. They used to take the grain, the stalks of the grain, beat it up and mix it with these husks. See in the ancient world what they did, they cut their wheat into sheaves and then they beat the sheaves out and the grain was falling out on a threshing floor. and then they would take a winnowing fork and the winnowing fork they would go into the grain throw it up in the air and the wind would blow all the flaky husks away. Now, that is part of the imagery contrast we've got here. The wicked, the ungodly, the people who despise God and His ways are likened to chaff. It is little nourishment and little value, little use, and it's easily blown hither and yon. What a contrast to a tree. Solid. And this tree is planted by streams of water. It's not just a kind of wilding pine that grows up in the wilderness. This is a cultured tree, as it were, planted by streams of water. And the idea is its roots are going out into these ever-flowing streams of water. And because of that, what happens? Its leaf never withers. and it bears its fruit in its season, and we're told whatever it does, or this person who is like a tree, it prospers in everything they do. What a glorious contrast. Chaff? Blown by the wind or a tree deeply and solidly rooted Well, that's the contrast you see that the scripture the psalmist is sitting before us here You may go into this year following the frivolity of the world being seduced by its Advertising and its promises of health wealth and prosperity and at the end of the year Have little to show except a greatly reduced bank balance and perhaps a great weariness of heart and soul, of failure and disappointment. Your dreams have not been fulfilled. That's what it is to be chaff-like, to follow the way of the world. Over against a life that may appear to some people to be stodgy, Unexciting and unrewarding, but in which you have faithfully, in the strength of Christ, fulfilled every opportunity and responsibility that he's given you. Slow, unglamorous perhaps, but lasting in its benefits. Even as I thought of these things afresh this morning, I had a hymn of John Newton come to mind. Now when you mention the hymn writer John Newton, most of you think immediately of Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Newton wrote many hymns, He was very poetic in his character. But one of the great hymns is glorious things of the spoken Zion, city of our God. Zion is an Old Testament concept for the people of God, the place of God, the dwelling place of God, the mountain of God. But it's especially an image of God with and God favoring and blessing his people. Now, John Newton wrote these words, he said, glorious things of thee are spoken, Zion city of our God, he whose word cannot be broken formed thee for his own abode. Now that's the wonderful thing about Zion, this is God dwelling with his people. Second verse goes like this, it says, see the streams of living waters, springing from eternal love, Well supply thy sons and daughters and all fear of want remove Who can faint? While such a river ever flows their thirst to assuage Grace which like the Lord the giver never fails from age to age see Newton captured this idea in Remember Jesus said this word if anyone thirsts let him come to me and drink Jesus himself is a source of flowing water Newton picks that up see the streams he says of living water flowing from where from eternal love And then he makes these words he says who can faint while such a river ever flows that those to us who age grace Which like the lord the giver never fails from age to age last verse listen to this savior If of Zion's city I through grace a member am, let the world deride or pity all you people that are so straight-laced, you don't have fun, you don't really enjoy what this present life offers, the world can deride and pity those who seek to walk with God. But listen to what Newton says, let the world deride or pity, I will glory in thy name. Fading is the worldlings pleasure, all is boasted pomp and show, solid joys and lasting treasure, none but science children know. That is what this contrast is trying to show us. solid joys, lasting treasures, none but Zion's children know, none except those who walk in the way of wisdom that's set before us here. Let's notice the third thing about these verses and finishing, namely the destiny of the two kinds of people that are set before us in this psalm and the first of them refers to the wicked who are like chaff and in verse five we're told this 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 Can I just mention again that it's a feature of the wisdom literature of the Bible that it takes a long view of life. Not just the moment, but the long view. Jesus said, don't lay up treasures on earth, where rust and moth will corrupt and thieves break in and steal. He says, lay up treasures in heaven. Because they'll last, they'll endure. The apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, he writes of the sufferings that he's endured. And he said, look, we don't lose heart in spite of these things because we do not look at the things that are seen, but the things that are unseen. The things that are seen are temporary, the unseen things are eternal. The wisdom literature of the Bible, the wisdom of the Bible says don't take the short view of life. Six months ago in Rotorua, there was a dear middle-aged to older-aged lady who was full of vitality and full of energy and activity. Then one day she learned that she had ovarian cancer. And in the space of just the time I've been down there, she has gone from this vigorous and vital woman into one who has lost all her hair, and while she battles on and is full of faith and full of zeal, is nevertheless facing the reality she's not gonna live long. Friends, wise people take a long view of life. They are concerned not just with the moment, because the moment can change in any moment. And so we are told to take the long view. Now here, The psalmist tells us that the wicked, that is this group of godless, ungodly people who don't have God and the fear of God in their minds and hearts, they will not stand in the judgment. The psalmist recognizes there is a day when every life is going to be inspected. And it will be inspected according to the things that we have done in the body. He says they won't stand, they won't pass the scrutiny of the judge. And the implication is that they will not only not pass that, but they will enter into the state of condemnation and tragic and terrible loss. Nor, he says, will sinners stand in the congregation of the righteous. Here the psalmist recognizes that at that final day of destiny there's not only the perishing and loss of the wicked but there's a congregation of the righteous. In 1981 my late wife Nola and I were in Southampton and there was a dear lady who had been a missionary for many years in Africa who had cancer and she died and there was a celebrity in Britain came to speak at a funeral. Dr Ian Paisley, some people will have know or heard of that particular name. I still remember the sermon that he preached on Revelation chapter 7. Because in Revelation chapter 7 you see we are given a picture, particularly in the second half of that chapter, of a great congregation and company in the heavens. John sees this vision he says after this I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation all tribes and people and languages standing before the throne and before the lamb this is the congregation of the righteous The gathering of the people of God in the presence of God, and we're told this in the latter parts of it. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more. The sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Friends, that is the congregation of the righteous. that the bible sets before us and revelation 22 gives us a further picture from the throne of god there flows a river of life and on either side of it there are the trees of life for the healing of the nations That's the picture, that's the congregation. That is what we're to set our eyes upon in the midst of a passing and fleeting world that often despises us. Take the long view. Because the long view is that God knows his people. And he knows them not simply cognitively as it were, having a knowledge of them in the head or information. He knows them with a covenantal love. He owns them as his own. He delights to be with them. And they will see his face and be with him forever and ever. Friends, that is the destiny of those who are truly blessed and favored by God. So here we are. We stand at the beginning of a new year. There are definitely two paths set before us in this psalm. There is the path of those who do not fear or acknowledge God. And there is the path of those who do acknowledge God, delight in his word, meditate upon it, let it suffuse their being, and live in the light of that word. Those are the two ways that are set before us. And the fruit of that, the result of that is set before us in terms of chaff or a flourishing tree. but more importantly, the final destiny set before us. Participation in a congregation of God, where God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is present, who knows us, who loves us, who delights in us. Let me finish with words of Psalm 16 verse 11. You have shown us the path of life, the psalmist writes. He has. God has shown us the path of life. He has shown it not simply in his word, but he has shown it in Jesus. Jesus is the only truly wise person. He is the incarnation of all wisdom. And when you look at Jesus, you see one who knew, acknowledged God, feared God, loved God, submitted his life to God, who let his life be filled with the word of God. That is the way of life. So hear these words again. You have shown to us the path of life. In your presence is, what, fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures evermore. That is the way of wisdom. That is the promise of wisdom. That's the hope of wisdom. Where are you going to set your roots down in this year? in the arid sands of the ungodly, or in the deep, refreshing, life-giving waters of Jesus. That's what this psalm encourages us to do. Let's pray together, shall we, as we finish. Our loving Father, we thank you that you have made us in your own image, that we might know you. And in knowing you, have this fullness of joy and to have the pleasures that are at your right hand. You want that for us, you made us for that, even now but then eternally. Help us to go into this new year remembering these words of wisdom, for you have indeed set before us the path of life. enable us by grace through the power of the accompanying and indwelling spirit of Jesus help us to walk in this way and to reap its fruits we pray in his name in Jesus name amen A closing hymn, a closing song is, Oh Lord, My Rock and My Redeemer. What a wonderful song this is. Sovereign Grace popularized this, sang this, and it's really worth singing well. So let's do that here. Let's rise, let's stand to the Lord. Oh Lord, My Rock, My Redeemer. O Lord, my God and my Redeemer. There is no other. True delight is found in you alone. Your grace, so well-to-deep, to fathom. Your love exceeds the heavens' reach. I'd like it too. My weary heart. My joy and child's are abounding. Your faithfulness I raise to you. O Lord, my God and my Redeemer, gracious Savior of my ruined life, my guilt and cross laid on your shoulders in my place. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you peace. And all the people said, Amen. Let's end with our doxology. I want to be who is able to keep, able to keep me from falling, and present you full mercy for the presence of his To the only wise God, our Savior, with glory and majesty, dominion over all. Go in peace. Enjoy one another's fellowship and company. Stay for a cup of tea. It's lovely to have you here this morning. Look full in His wonderful face And the things of earth will grow strangely dim In the light of His glory and grace ♪ Turn your eyes to the hillside ♪ Where justice and mercy embrace ♪ There the Son of God gave His life for us ♪ And our measureless debt by His hand ♪ To you we lift our eyes ♪ Jesus, our glory and our prize ♪ We adore you, behold you, our Savior ever true ♪ Oh Jesus, we turn our eyes to you ♪ Oh Jesus, we turn our eyes to you ♪ ♪ Oh Jesus, we turn our eyes to you ♪