Well, please be seated. That is a beautiful, I love that song. That is a great one. We're going to be in Psalm 1 here this morning. Psalm 1. In just a moment I'll read the whole text with you. Psalm 1 verse 1. says, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth its fruit in its season. whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish. So our text, this great famous psalm here, there are songs written to this psalm, and it's a beautiful summary of the godly man, or the blessed man. And blessed here, it means a person who is extremely happy, or fulfilled. You remember, of course, the Lord himself, when he came to Israel, he teaches the Sermon on the Mount, which has a list of certain blessed stands, blessed positions of the godly. Blessed are the poor in spirit is the Lord's first statement to those who would have God's blessing. The psalm doesn't ask men to pursue blessedness. It assumes you already do. And our first observation would be that men must refuse some things. You see that there? They must refuse some things to have God's blessing. Blessing and joy and happiness and fulfillment They are a motivator of all of us. Everybody is driven to find fulfillment and happiness and joy. They are a great motivator of us. And God's Word insists, and you'll remember this, you'll know this to be true, that human nature seeks with a corrupted bend. Men are just driven by an energy in us, the sin nature in us, to go after what it wants with a corrupted nature, not a perfect sinless nature. And so men seek, naturally, blessing and fulfillment in their own way. Men go about finding their pleasures and their contentment and fulfillment. And God tells men what they don't know, by His Word, and this is really the wonder, and this is the glory of the written Word of God. God tells men what they don't know by His Word, and this reveals a path of life. This revelation that God makes to you and I throughout His Word, and in particular in Psalm 1 here, He sketches out for you. He shows you a path of life that God made for men. It's so you can know what you didn't know. Do you remember Psalm 119, 105? Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. The Word of God is how you see where to put your feet. The Word of God is how we know how to direct the waywardness of our own hearts. The Word also reveals to us that our own hearts at times, many times, shrink away from God's Word. Our hearts shrink away from what God shows us. Do you remember in the book of John, in the very first chapter, John said that the light of Christ is the light of men. But what did men do when the light came? Men shrunk away from the light. Men shrink away from the light because men love darkness. This is the natural condition of men in our hearts. And I wish I could tell you more of, you know, could we do a gene editing and correct our hearts at that level? No. They're bent. They're broken. But when we put our faith in Christ, when you are born again, when we come to know and love the Lord, and when we come to repent of our sins, God reveals these things to us. God teaches these things to you so that you know your own heart. And this psalm is a speaking to your heart and my heart. that we can know the path of life. The Lord also expects us to refuse some things in our lives. The Lord exposes to us things that we have to do away with. And it's for our good. When God tells you don't do this or that, when He tells you what to avoid, it's not because God wants to keep something good from you, it's because He knows how to give you what is good. There is a corrupt way of blessing. There is a way that men seek to find blessing that's corrupt, that's broken. And there is a true way. There is a good and right way of seeking blessing. And so God's Spirit here, when we begin meditating on this psalm, God's Spirit is directing you to want what you naturally want, which is blessing. doesn't say don't desire to be blessed. Don't desire. He's not saying don't go after that. He's just simply telling you don't do it this way and do it this way. The Lord Jesus taught in a similar way. The Lord Jesus taught with negative teachings and positive teachings in the very same way. Do you remember when the Lord taught about building a house? The Lord taught a parable about building a house. And he said, don't build your house on the sand. Don't do it that way. He said positively though, where to build your house? And you remember where that is, of course. You build your house on the rock. It's going to be more work. It's going to be harder. But building your house on the rock Contrast to the man who built his house on the sand and what happens when the storms come? What happens when the trials come? What happens when there is something so powerful and so menacing coming before you? What happens when it hits? Well, the person who has been careful, the person who has been building on the rock is ready to weather the storm. The person who has been listening to God direct his steps is ready. the ready for what comes. This psalm teaches us avoid seeking blessing in your natural native way. Know God's way. And God's blessing here, you'll notice right away, it produces what looks like flourishing. It uses words that speak about plants. When God's blessing is yours, you're going to be like a fruitful plant, it says. And you're going to have a fruitful life. You're going to have a strong life that is full of life. And what happens if you seek blessing on your own way? What happens if you just go about life uncorrected? And it says here what happens to that life. What becomes of that life? What does it turn to? Well, it uses the word chaff. It says, the life that does not hear, the life that is unguided. Now, listen real carefully, because this is a fundamental principle of a life of faith. The life that is uncorrected, the life that will not be directed by the Lord, what does it produce? It produces chaff. Chaff is the shell that's on wheat. or it's the shell that's on rice. And after you're done processing your wheat or your rice, you're pounding it to knock the shell off. The shell just blows away in a little bit of dust. It can't even produce heat when you burn it. It's so light. It's so worthless. So the Lord's warning here is very picturesque. The Lord teaches us Pursue blessing. Have blessing my way. Know what it means to be a man and to have God's blessing my way. Don't seek it the wrong way or else your life amounts to chaff. And we need to learn to direct our hearts according to the Word of the Lord. We need to learn to hear these words and really take the time in the afternoon and the evening. What does this mean to my heart? How do I understand what the Lord is teaching? How do I go about trying to do this? The first thing he says is, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. That's verse 1. Psalm 1, verse 1. Blessed is the man who walks not. It's a negative command. tells you where not, how not to walk. And verse 2 says, But the man, blessed of God, delights in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night. The Spirit of God, who has inspired all the scriptures, you remember of course that the book in your lap is a miraculous book. Not obviously the printing press that created it, but these words have been preserved for you and I for literally thousands of years by God's providence. And these words show a man seeking blessing, a godly man seeking blessing, by refusing a certain path and by pursuing a certain path. There are two lives contrasted. The one to be refused and the one to be embraced. There's one of walking, standing, and sitting, and we're supposed to refuse that one. And then another one of delighting and meditating. Do and don't do. And then look down, do you see down there at verse 6? This is actually really helpful. Look at what it says down at verse 6. he kind of offers a little bit of a promise, a little bit of incentive there in the psalm, and it says, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous. In other words, as he gives you and I this instruction, as the Word of God instructs a man how to direct his own heart, he's saying this, God knows the right way. God knows the way. You remember the Lord Jesus who says, I am the way. I am the way. I am the truth. I am the light. Nobody comes to the Father except by me. Understand it in terms of instructions of how to have God's righteousness. God knows the way to righteousness. He knows. Not your intuition. Not some false religion. God knows the way. And so, the psalm closes with this reminder to you, with this pointing for you to say, oh, yes, God is the one who knows. God is the one who can help direct me. God is the one who can point my faith to know Him and to rest in Him. In the book of John, the Lord Jesus says, nobody knows the Father except he who was with the Father. Nobody knows heaven except he who came down from heaven. He is the way. This psalm speaks to the man and the woman who would know God and would believe Him and would let Him, listen, let Him direct your heart and your hope to eternal life. Everybody pursues blessedness. Everybody wants happiness and joy. And this drive in men for blessing, it's kind of interesting if you think about it the way I'm going to illustrate it, but this drive for blessing is why you get up early in the morning, or it's why you sleep in late. See, your desire for joy, your desire for fulfillment, means a different thing to almost everybody. Some can't stand sleeping too long because there are things that they've got to get done in the morning. There's something maybe they desire to do in the morning. Maybe you want to get up early because you love that first cup of coffee. Maybe you love the peacefulness of the morning. Some of you can't stand to get up early in the morning because it's cold and you have to get out of your bed and you just want to lay in your bed for a while and it's happy to be in your bed. And the early morning people kind of look at the late sleepers and they think, what's wrong with those guys? And the late sleepers look at the early morning people and they think, what's wrong with those guys? But each one is really pursuing their own happiness. Some people take an extra portion of dessert whenever they can because it brings pleasure. We love the sugar. We love the flavor of it. But some will deny that very same thing even though it tastes good because they fear and they reject the possible result maybe of diabetes or maybe they're worried about their weight and so they will reject it. Each of these people is pursuing their blessedness. They're pursuing their happiness. Every man is pursuing this. Every man is driven by their desire of blessing, their desire for joy. And on the other side of the same coin, every man is doing this because they are also trying to avoid certain things. In other words, sometimes you'll say, I'm not going to eat that because of the bad result that follows. I'm not going to sleep late because my friends are going to tease me because I slept too long. Sometimes our desire of happiness and fulfillment and joy has got these negative things that we will allow into our lives. God's spirit in the psalm teaches that blessing is by a certain avenue. The godly man works on his pursuit of blessing. It says the blessed man does not walk in the counsel of the ungodly in the first verse. He doesn't stand in the path of sinners and he does not sit in the seat of the scornful. Your faith in Christ, your knowledge of Christ's revelation of God to you will often tell you to deny certain things in your life. And this is an example of that. Faith is taught. Faith is instructed, and here it's instructed, do not take counsel in this manner. Do not walk in this manner. Do not sit in the company of these. The godly man is positively instructed instead to meditate in the law and to delight in the law. If you truly seek God's blessing, if you desire God's Blessing who knows the way of the righteous. He knows how to show you the way of righteousness. Remember Paul said Righteousness is what is revealed in the gospel God's righteousness God knows the way God shows you the way that there is a way of righteousness and He puts forth you and I here that we are to delight in the law Meditate in the law day and night And so as you and I engage or avoid each day, as we engage in certain things and as we avoid certain things and our desire for fulfillment and our desire for blessing, either passively or actively going after a smooth life, a comfortable life, a happy life, God's Word puts before us the best outcome. God's Word puts before us not only these instructions, but He puts forth the most profitable, the best outcome for it. The Psalm does not say, seek blessing. It already knows that you desire it. So let's think about the first part of the instruction where it says to avoid these things. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful." Each of these things is a posture, it's a disposition, and it's a relational activity. Each of these three things speaks about, in a sense, Who are you letting your mind spend time with? Who are you letting your heart spend time with? And God's Word here says that if you're not carefully tending to this, you're on the wrong path. And if this was a text in the New Testament, It would relate to what happened in the book of Acts in chapter 4. I'll just summarize for you. In Acts chapter 4, the disciples and apostles, actually the apostles Peter and John, are arrested. They had been speaking the gospel in Jerusalem, and they handled confrontation very clearly and very strongly in the Lord, and they were in trouble with the rulers of Jerusalem. And at the end of this confrontation, or near the end of the confrontation, those who were mad at them said, who are these guys? They're obviously just hillbillies, but they don't talk like it anymore. They don't act like it. And the passage ends saying that they remembered that they had been with Jesus. They remembered that these men had been, I'm going to use the word, tainted. They had been colored. They had been flavored. They had the smell of the Lord Jesus. They sounded like the Lord Jesus. They had learned to think like Him and speak like Him. And it was obvious in their lives. So, when we look at this psalm here, and it says, who not to hang out with, who not to travel with, this is a very similar sort of a situation. Who do you take direction from? Who do you take opinion from? It uses the word counsel there in Psalm 1. Do not walk in the counsel of the ungodly. Who do you get advice from? Who do you plan with? Who do you derive your purposes from? Don't take your direction from the ungodly. Don't take your opinions from the ungodly. The godly thinks Bible. The godly fear God. The godly understand life through a God-centered and Bible-informed heart and mind. This is what the godly are like. They know God is not a Republican or a Democrat. They know life is not about financial profits and losses. They know that life isn't about the pursuit of pleasure. They know that life isn't about having worldly, wise philosophies of life. And what do I mean by that? They don't take their principles, for retirement for example, from the world. The godly don't think about retirement with the world's wisdom. They don't daydream about week-long golf vacations, or week-long fishing trips when they finally get to retire. They think about God's work, God's ways. The godly are not sarcastic, or mean, or people-pleasers. When you walk and take counsel from the ungodly, you learn to be more and more sarcastic. You learn to be more and more mean when you walk with these people. Or you learn how to be people-pleasers. The godly don't fear global warming. The godly don't fear pandemics. Why? Why doesn't the world, the godly, fear global warming? Well, because God is the one who warms up the world and cools it down. And if he decides to warm it up and end life, who's going to do anything about it? This is why the godly don't fear global warming. If it's a thing, well, then it's a thing and God's the one in charge of it. He's either going to turn it up or he's going to turn it down. We don't fear pandemics because God is the one who either has the power to give you life or to take it away. Whether by a pandemic or you could stub your toe and get an infection so bad that you die of a toe infection a week after the fact. God can take your life however he chooses. So we don't fear a pandemic. the godly don't take their counsel from people who are in dread of the pandemic or who are in dread of the global warming. We just don't. This is not where we get our counsel. It's not where we learn our attitudes. It's not where we learn our opinion about what is going on in this world and in this life. Job lost his entire family and all of his possessions in the first chapter of Job. And when his life was nearing what he thought could be the end of his life. He was terribly sick. He was suffering in pain after he lost all of his wealth, after he lost all of his children, after he lost all of his property. His sickness appears that it could just be a horrible, life-ending sickness. And what does Job say? He says, naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall return there. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Here is godly counsel. The blessed man does not take his counsel from CNN, or from Fox, or from Tucker. We don't take it from comedians. We don't take it from life's commentators. We take it from godly men and women. We take it from people who understand God's ways. We take it from people who properly fear the Lord, love and trust His Word. This is the people that we walk in counsel with. This is the people who we take our opinions from. The godly believe, the godly think, the godly speak and live according to what God has put in them by His Word. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. You and I both take our counsel or have taken counsel from even past generations. Many of my natural instincts about things and opinions about things are things I learned in high school. They're still with me. Philosophies and ideas I have about what's good and bad and right and wrong. Here are some sayings that I brought with me from my past and from my childhood. The Lord helps those who help themselves. It's not in the Bible, but I have heard and believed in that kind of wisdom. Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. That also did not come from the Bible, but that's another thing that we brought from our past. You only live once. YOLO is one that comes from our current culture. Survival of the fittest is a phrase we often use that justifies our dominating in a certain kind of a situation. We believe in the American way is another thing that has contributed to our wisdom and our ways of the world. He who has the gold makes the rules is another principle, an idea, a philosophy that we have brought with us. I'm going to get what's mine is another idea that we may have learned from our childhood. You need to forgive yourself is something we have learned from the world of psychology. The end justifies the means is a principle we have learned from the world and from history before us. Don't take counsel from the ungodly. Don't take your principle from these ways of the world. Colossians 2.8 spoke this way. Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit according to the tradition of men. There are wise sounding philosophies from the tradition of men that deceive you. You hear them, they sound right, you go with it. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly. Lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. Our wisdom comes from Christ. Our counsel comes from Christ. You need God's Word in your mind and in your heart that your opinions and your ways, your counsel has come from our Lord, our Savior. The Spirit of God speaks on every single subject, every single matter that you might encounter. And you might be wondering, well, how in the world can that be? There wasn't global warming when the apostles were writing the scriptures. and you and I must be careful, thoughtful people as we seek the Lord to understand His ways before we open our mouths on these subjects and speak with godly wisdom, taking our counsel from the Lord. The psalm also says the blessed man doesn't stand in the path with sinners, he doesn't sit with the scoffer. Standing with them is fraternizing with them and socializing with them. And sinners are here They're those who are not the godly. They are the ones who are not the godly. They practice sin without shame. In other words, their sinful lives, their sinful ways, I'm not speaking about it in terms of I want to look down on them. They just do it as a matter of course. It is what is normal to them. The blessed man, the man who would be blessed in the Lord is told to not stand in the path with sinners. Don't be in the way with sinners. The spirit of the world loves and hates certain things and they chat about it along the way of life. They complain. They share confidence in certain solutions. They have similar methods and outlooks. They are confident in certain people and they are skeptical and derisive of certain people. The sinners do not like, for example, the Christian's opinion and philosophy that life formed in the womb at the day of conception is life. The unbelieving world thinks that's a crazy idea and they think it's mean that you would say taking the life of the unborn is murder. They think that's mean. They think you want to take rights away from women. Don't stand in the path with sinners is the warning here, because when you're in the path with sinners, and conversing with them, and sharing ideas with them, it rubs off on you. It tends to cross-pollinate you and I, as we live in that way. Instead, we are to stand with the godly-minded, with the godly hopeful, and even the godly disgusted. As in, the godly man is disgusted at certain things. The godly man is appalled at certain things. And he can say that certain things are dark. Certain things are wicked. Certain things are evil. And we can say that. We know that. Proverbs 8.13 says, The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Christians aren't passive about evil. We don't have no opinion about what's evil. Actually, as we walk with the Lord, as we grow in the Lord, we learn to call black, black, evil, evil, murder, murder. We learn to call these things for what they are. That same proverb goes on to say, pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth, I hate. The proverb says, you and I in the Lord, we hate pride, we hate arrogance, we hate evil. The blessed man, it goes on to say, doesn't sit with a scoffer. One of the words that shows up in the definition of scoffer is commentator or even ambassador. It's a very interesting word because it can have a very positive connotation and it can have a very negative connotation. To willfully refuse to learn the way of the Lord is what a scoffer is. To willfully avoid learning the way of the Lord is what a scoffer is. The scoffer mocks those who do willfully learn the ways of the Lord. The scoffer ridicules those who are in God's ways. Proverbs 20 and verse 1 says, wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. Wine is a mocker. Have any of you known the mocking influence of wine on your own heart and mind? I have. The power and influence of wine and rum and scotch and vodka and tequila and beer, the influence of these things on some people is to turn them into a mocker. They begin to let their tongue and their mouth and their head be outspoken and they're looking down on, in particular, the godly. The scopper speaks and the scopper thinks from a mind of godlessness. He has no fear of God. He holds the godly thought. He holds godly ways and contempt. He looks down on godly precepts. He looks down on godly truths. He looks down on godly people. Don't sit with them. Blessed is the man who does not sit with the scoffer. Don't sit with them. Don't take your leisure with them. Now, be careful because you know that our Lord was accused of his own immorality because he spent time with tax collectors and sinners. You'll remember that of course. Matthew 11 19 has a very interesting verse that says, the son of man came eating and drinking and they say, look a glutton and a wine-bibber, a friend of tax collectors and sinners. There are many people in the day of Christ who saw him having a meal with these tax collectors and sinners and then saying, making the charge, this proves he's an immoral man. Now what was our Lord doing when he sat down with a crowd like this, if he was at dinner with them. He was preaching. He was teaching. He cared for the lost. He wanted the lost to know the way of righteousness, the way of salvation, the way of faith. That's why Matthew 11, 19 ends with the phrase that says, wisdom is justified by her children. In other words, if the Lord had done well, if the Lord had done right, then we would see a right fruit that come from it. What came from the Lord's interaction with sinners? Converted people. When the Lord used time this way, He used it to lead people to the kingdom. The end of that phrase says, wisdom is proved right by her children. What sort of righteousness came from the scorners and the mockers who made this charge of the Lord Jesus? What good thing came from their lives? Nothing. They turned away the lost. They had no heart for the lost. They wouldn't take time to even share with the lost. He goes on to say in the psalm, his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law he meditates day and night. These are what The man who wants blessing is to do. This is what we're supposed to do. The man who will not be blessed has a manner of living. The man who will not be blessed does live in a way that he becomes less godly with the way he lives. The man who cannot be blessed will begin to smell and taste and look like the ungodly. So the psalm warns, don't spend time with those. These will change the way you see the world. These will change the way you think about the things that are happening in the world are about eternal life. And God's word says delight in the law and meditate in the law. The law is not the Ten Commandments in particular. It's not simply what is in Exodus chapter 20. It is the whole counsel of God's precepts, of God's rules, the writings of Moses. And for you and I who live in the day that we live in, it also includes God's revelation of himself and God's teaching of Himself. The Lord Jesus says that those who are His disciples, they love His commands. And this is how the disciples of Christ are known. They love the Lord Jesus. They love the Lord's instructions. They love the way of life that Christ reveals to men. The words here in the psalm says, delight in these. Find solace in these. Find comfort in these. Find counsel in these. Find the true understanding of God in these. Find light, the light of life in these, in God's words, in God's law. The Christ came and His life and His teaching fed both admiration and scorn. When the Lord Jesus preached and when the Lord Jesus went from town to town, some people loved to hear what He had to say. There was no wiser teacher had ever come and they loved it. Some people hated it. The man who would be blessed would delight in God's law, would love God's words and His teaching, The blessed man seeks the mind of God, seeks the understanding of God. And this man's life, who learns to feed off of and learns to delight in His way is established in God's blessing. His way is established in the blessedness of what it means to be God's people. So in verse 3, it says, He will be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bring forth its fruit in its season, delighting in God's word. Seeking God's Word for God's understanding, for His counsel, for His influence on your life. Being with Him so that He is the one who colors your counsel. This forms the life of a blessed man and this man will be like a tree planted by rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season. whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so, but are like the chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous." In other words, this instruction If you'll make the time to meditate on this, if you'll do some work to really understand the meaning of this, you're going to see two different ways contrasted. The way that God would compel you to listen to the right way is with flourishing and fruitfulness, and he uses the word He uses the word prosper at the end of verse 3. Whatever he does shall prosper. The Lord makes this promise. He makes this revelation known to you with both a threat and with a promise. Do you see that? God tells you and I these things with a threat and a promise. What is the promise? The promise is a vital life, a strong life, a flourishing and fruitful life. You remember in Romans 7, verse 4, it says you died to sin and you were raised with Christ in order that you might bear fruit for God? The Lord Jesus has given the Christian new life in order that they might be fruitful. There is a promise here in the psalm for fruitfulness. Like a tree planted by waters. He also makes a threat. God threatens the ungodly. He says, the ungodly are not so. The ungodly are not going to prosper. The ungodly are not in the way of righteousness. They are not in a way that ends with a man standing before the Lord. The psalm is written so that you can navigate life in the light of God's promises and words and be found to stand. The psalm is given for you to have a positive hope, a reasonable and provable hope in the Lord. The psalm is a clear navigation way so that you can say, I see the way to go. I see the way to true strength. I see the way to stand in the judgment. I walk with the Lord. I go with the Lord. God knows the way of the righteous. I trust Him. He is the way. The Lord Jesus Christ is the truth. I'm not purposefully trying to be confusing with a shift between Old Testament and New Testament. The Lord Jesus is also called The Word. He is called The Way. He is The Life. Nobody comes to the Father except by Him. When the Psalm ends saying, He knows the way of the righteous, He is speaking so that the righteous know how to go. Do you know how to go? Do you know how to go? Do you seek the Lord for his counsel? Or do you take your thoughts and attitudes and opinions? Are you being rubbed off on by the world of the sinner and of the ungodly, who despise God, who mock God? Be real careful if you follow much politics. Be careful, because the political commentators and the spokespeople of our day, even if they're just comedians, even if they're just famous people from Hollywood, these people are teaching you and I to have opinions and attitudes that did not come from God's mind or God's Word. Don't take your opinions, your attitudes, your philosophies from this world. Spend time and it's interesting isn't it how this psalm tells you the time to spend? Meditating and delighting on the Lord. What what is it gonna say on your calendar? When do you make this appointment? morning and evening morning and evening Remind yourself morning and evening be in the word morning and evening not because that's how you're gonna get to heaven But because you want to know the Lord Soak your mind and your heart in the word morning and evening. Speak the word to one another. Listen to the word. And that is exactly what causes you to be a people who people will say they've been with the Lord. They talk like the Lord. They think like the Lord. They speak about disaster like the Lord. They speak about fearful things like the Lord. They speak about the end, like the Lord. They speak about the coming judgment, like the Lord. They speak about right and wrong, fearlessly, like the Lord. Lovingly, like the Lord. This is a beautiful psalm with a great promise for life and strength. It's a beautiful psalm of threats, threatening that you would not go down the road of the unrighteous. Blessed is the man who walks not with the ungodly, who stands not with the ungodly, who sits not with the ungodly. Blessed is the man who delights in the Lord and in His law, who meditates on the Lord and in His precepts, this man will be like a fruitful tree. Our Lord Jesus came and gave the opera of forgiveness of sin and new life that your life would produce much fruit. This is how a Christian lives a life of fruitfulness that is pleasing to the Lord and that is ultimately and forever valuable to the Lord. Let me just close with you in a word of prayer for a moment. Oh great God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the psalm. Teach us to guard our hearts. Lord, teach us to love your word. We want to love your word, Lord. We want to understand more and more. Lord, use this people here. Lord, speak to their hearts, direct their hearts, Lord, to understand and to believe and to trust your word, Lord. God, I pray these things in the great name of the Savior who came and preached and died and rose again. Amen.