So, the Psalms of Ascent. We are looking at Psalm 125, if you're keeping track. And I thought it would be interesting to look at some rabbinical thoughts concerning these Psalms of Ascent. What do the ancient rabbis who have studied these Psalms for thousands of years, what do they have to say about the Psalms of Ascent? Well, they proclaim that it is a journey to a higher place. So as you sang these songs, you were going to a higher place. Your thinking was becoming elevated and there was a climactic progress that you were making as you went through the Psalms of Ascent. And I believe Obviously, these ancient rabbis, moved by the Holy Spirit in many cases, were seeing what God saw. And that is that there was an elevation, there was a climbing, there was a going to a higher place, like eagles that mount up with wings that soar into the heavens. But Psalm 25 is also a warning. There's a great blessing here for all of you who are obeying to God, all of you who are righteous. But there's a warning here for those who are not quite committed. Those who kind of are a little in and a little out. And we're gonna see that. Because really the players in the game of life, if God is looking down from heaven upon the earth, there are really only three types of people. I could break it into these three groups. There are the righteous, those who are believers, those who know the Lord. I pray that that's the majority of you. What would be the other group? The Bible, not me, would refer to them as the wicked. Not because they're totally wicked, but because they don't know God, therefore they have no ability to be righteous by default. But then there is this group, the uncommitted. They're not quite in the righteous category and they're not quite in the wicked category. They're like the Laodiceans. They're a little bit this and a little bit that. They kind of dabble with church and they dabble with the road, you know? I mean, they can have a good time on Sunday morning, but they can have a really good time on Saturday night. Do you know what I'm talking about? Once had a Pentecostal preacher talk to me, and he says, man, those people get excited on Sunday morning, but I can't get the Saturday night out of them. Y'all know what I'm talking about. The psalmist starts out by talking about the blessing for those who are righteous. Those who have put all their trust in the Lord. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. Do you know where you're sitting right now is upon a mountain? Elevation about 1,700 feet above sea level. Do you know this mountain has been here a long time? I dare say this mountain has been here since the time of Jesus. I dare say this mountain has been here at the time of creation. God made this mountain right here that we're sitting on. A lot has changed on the outside, but this mountain, this mountain is the same. Do you all understand that? And that's the comparison that the psalmist makes to the righteous. But it's not just any mountain. It's not just this little mountain here in Shepton. He's talking about Mount Zion. He says, you righteous people are like Mount Zion. You cannot be moved and you're going to abide forever. Do you all know that? Say amen. You're going to abide forever. You're not going anywhere. Your destiny has been established. You are eternal. And you're eternal in the right way. And you're unmovable, according to the scriptures. And if you live your life based upon the words that come from heaven, the Logos and the Rhema, the Bible says, not only will you not fall, but everything you do, if you build your life upon the word, that will not fall. That cannot be shaken. He goes on to talk about the righteous are indestructible. Do you all believe that? He says, as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people. From this time forth and forevermore, you are surrounded the same way Jerusalem was surrounded. Jerusalem is an interesting place. Have you ever been to the Holy Land? I've been there twice. It is built on a mountain, but around it are higher mountains. There is the Mount of Olives to the east. Then there is Mount Hermon way in a distance, but it is to the north. And there's also Mount Carmel to the north. And then there is the Western Mount. So it is a mountain, but it is surrounded by other mountains. And God says, that's the way I surround my church, my people. I surround them. I put them in the center and I am all around that. Do you know that? You really see that when Satan wants to mess with Job. And God does this to every single righteous person, every single believer. You have what Job had. What is it? Satan knew what it was. Satan came and he says, does Job fear God for no reason? Listen, have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has? In other words, I can't get to him. Do y'all know why Satan can't get to you? There is a hedge around you. God has put a hedge around you if you're the righteous. Do you know there's a hedge around this church? The Bible says that the angel of the Lord does what? He encamps around those. Do you fear God? Do you take Him seriously? Is He your everything? There's an encampment around your life. So what does this mean? Yeah, not only are you immovable, but you're indestructible. Nothing can get to you. But it's all contingent on this little word called trust. Because all of those promises I mentioned are contingent upon this. Those who do what? Trust in the Lord. Not contingent upon people that don't trust. Do you all trust the Lord? How much do you trust the Lord? Do you trust the Lord completely? What does this word trust mean? Just zero in. This is a Hebrew word. Baca, I think, not sure of the transliteration, but listen, perhaps the part that is maybe least obvious, but it goes with, is total confidence and total boldness. You're totally confident. You're totally bold about your confidence. You know, this reminds me, have you ever watched that, remember, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? So let's imagine that you climb up there and you get to that million dollar question, and you only got one lifeline left. And the question comes, and you don't know the answer. It's a scientific question. But you know this, that your phone-a-friend for science is one of the leading scientists. He's written books. He is the leading authority. And the question, although you don't know it, it doesn't sound that difficult. So as the host is phoning your friend, you jump out of your seat and go, I won! I won! You don't even have to listen. You know you won. Why? Because you have absolute, total confidence in that person. Do you understand this? Guess who's your phone-a-friend? Who's your phone-a-friend? If you're in a crisis, it's not going your way, and you cry out to heaven, and you say, I trust you, Jesus, you got it. I said, you got it. your total confidence is in Him. But I see a lot of believers don't have total confidence in Him. And we'll get to you. But the other final thing that he wants these people to know is that they can relax because The Lord's going to fight their battles. Here's the way he puts it. He says, the scepter of the wicked shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous. Least the righteous stretch out their hand to do wrong. It's kind of an interesting way of phrasing that. But what he's basically saying, the scepter is authority and judgment. He says, don't worry about the power and the authority that the wicked have. You all had a bad boss. Had some authority over you. Yeah. You've had bad governmental leaders. There's a lot of ways that the wicked have gotten the scepter. And here God says, don't worry about that. If I've allotted something to you, if I've given something to you, they cannot touch it. And I will intervene. Here's the caveat. Least the righteous stretch out their hand to do wrong. What does this mean? This means that as bad people and ungodly people do stuff that is wicked against us, our temptation is to fight fire with fire. Oh, you want to sue me? Oh, I got a lawyer. You want to play that? Oh, here we go. You understand where I'm going with this? You can allow the wickedness of the wicked to become your wickedness, and you're going to go fire to fire, wickedness to wickedness. Let me give it to you in the Old Testament, and then I'll give it to you in the New. And you got to see this, because the Lord wants you to know, don't worry about those who have power and authority over you, whatever they are, because eventually I'm going to show up and they're going to be gone. Listen, refrain from anger and forsake wrath. Fret not yourself, it tends only to evil. See what the Lord's saying there? Psalm 37, 8. For the evildoers shall be cut off. Don't worry about it. I'm going to do it. But those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. Just relax. Let me fight for you. Listen, in just a little while, the wicked will be no more. Though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there. You walk in one day and that seat will be empty. That bad ruler, that bad boss, that bad neighbor, whatever. If they persist and you give it to the Lord, one day they won't be there. Why? Because it's the meek that shall inherit the land. Not those who take vengeance. Let me give it to you in the New Testament so you see it. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends upon you, live peaceably with all. Meaning that if somebody comes at you with anger and they're going to attack you, say, man, I just want peace. I'm not going to come back at you. I'm not going to attack you. You just need to know I'm laying down here. Why? Listen. Beloved. Everybody say never. I said everybody say never. Never do what? Never avenge yourself. Why? Why don't you have to avenge yourself? Why? Leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, sayeth the Lord. How many people know when you give this to God, I have, when this has happened in my life, and there's been a bunch of times, and I said, Lord, I turn him over to you. But I always pray this, go easy on him. Go easy on him. I remember I did this in high school once. And this kid was just, oh, he's always on me. And even in high school, I said, Lord, I just turn him over to you. You might take this the wrong way, but the kid came in the next day in crutches. Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, oh, will the Lord break his leg? Is he the mafia? Listen, I don't know how the Lord takes vengeance, but he does. Sometimes it's corporal. Sometimes what the Lord does is says, I'm just going to remove my protection from this person and let the devil mess with them for a while. Do you all understand how this works? There is no weapon that is formed against you that can prosper if your total trust is in the Lord. So, so far I've been super positive. So far I've been the pastor of peaches and cream. Because I'm talking about righteous people. This is all good stuff. But it's going to turn. because I'm going to start talking about this group. Two categories, the uncommitted and the wicked. God has to deal with the uncommitted. You say, well, why? They're just uncommitted. They can't make up their mind whether they want to be good or whether they want to be wicked. You know, there's no middle ground with God. Listen, here's the group. but those who turn aside to their crooked ways the Lord will lead away with the evildoer." Two categories. The evildoers, one, and then those who are on the right path but turn aside. Those who go back to their crooked ways. Did you all have some crooked ways before you came to the Lord? You had some crooked things. Remember those two categories. Only two types of people. So why is it necessary for God to deal with these people? In the Old Testament, there was sin in the camp. There were people that stole and lied. And when the people went to battle, God could not be on their side. And so Joshua came and he prayed. He says, I don't understand, Lord. You're not fighting for us. Why? And the Lord says, because there's people here that are just lying and cheating, and they're not really supposed to be here. And I can't be with you. if they're with you. I'm not going to ask you to read the story, because it doesn't end well. I'll give you a clue. It involves stones and rocks. Listen what the Lord says. I will bless you no more unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. And it turns out that the devoted things were not only those things that they stole, but those people that were involved in the stealing and lying. Why? God says, I can't be with you. Corporately, you need to remove that. One other time it happened in the New Testament. You say, Pastor, that was the Old Testament. Man, God was really in a bad mood back in the Old Testament. Did a lot of times. But in the New Testament, surely this doesn't. Well, here you go. First Corinthians. Somebody in the assembly who was sleeping with his father's wife. He was living in sin, and he was attending that assembly, and nobody was doing anything about it. And so the Apostle Paul says, I really can't believe this, so let me tell you what I want you to do. When you assemble in the name of the Lord Jesus, my spirit is going to be present in the power of our Lord. And in that service, I would like you to deliver that man to Satan for the destruction of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. Then he says this, do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Clean out that old leaven, then you might be a new lump. You say, Pastor, do you do this in church? Are there people that are living in blatant sin that you might ask to leave? Yeah. They won't repent. They won't turn. Reason number one is God can't be with us. Reason number two is that sin will just spread like leaven. Remember Jesus said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. People come and they play the church game. They look really good, but they're not living the life. What is hypocrisy? It's those things that are hidden. He says, nothing is covered up that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be made known. The 11 of the Pharisees, they judged other people without mercy. And the second thing that they did is they always tried to look more holy than they were. So the scariest story by far in the Bible, you all hear about the story of Ananias and Sapphira. You all know this story. This story is so hard that if I was writing the Bible, I would say we should leave this one out. Because people aren't going to understand this story. This is hard. So there's two people, Anastasia and Sapphira. And so the church moved by the Holy Spirit says, everybody's suffering in poverty, so here's the solution that the Holy Spirit has given to us. We're all going to sell everything we have. Imagine it happening here. We're all going to sell everything we have. This is the Holy Spirit telling the church this. We're selling it, and we're going to divvy it up so that everybody has equally the same amount. Now, what does this mean? What does this mean for rich people that are in the congregation? Yeah. The poor people are like, yeah, let's do that. The rich people are like, whoa. So I managed to anonymize part of those rich people, and they had a piece of property, and they sold it, and I don't know what they were thinking. Maybe they were thinking that they got way more than they thought they were going to get. And let's just say they thought they were going to get 50,000, and they got 100,000. And they're like, well, you got 100,000, I guess that's a lot of money to bring before the apostles and just give it out to everybody. They're not going to know how much it's sold for. We'll give 50, that's all it's worth, and we'll keep back 50. But remember what everybody believed. You're giving it all. And so they come forward and they said, here it is. This is all of it. They brought it. According to the Bible, only part of it laid at the apostles' feet. Then Peter said this, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? Notice who they're lying to, the Holy Spirit. Why? Because it was the Holy Spirit that called the church to do this. And you kept after yourself part of the land proceeds. And then he goes on to explain that it really wasn't so much, if you would have been honest and said, we can't do this. We can't do this. This is too much money. So we're going to give you half. If you would have done that, what does he say? While it remained unsold, it remained your own. And after you sold it, it was at your disposal. But why have you contrived to your heart this deed to present it, he's paraphrasing, as if it was all of it? You've lied not to man but to God. And the Bible says, While those words were coming out of Peter's mouth, Ananias heard these words. He fell over, breathed his last breath, and died. Interesting note, Peter didn't pull out his sword and kill him. He didn't ask the apostles or the deacons to kill him. God took care of it right there. Now you go, what? Was it really that bad? What do you think happened? It says, great fear fell upon the whole congregation. Yeah, it did. Yeah, it did. The key phrase here is Satan filled his heart to lie to the Holy Spirit. Didn't lie to man, lied to the Holy Spirit. Now, the Bible says there's only one sin that cannot be forgiven. You know what it is? It's blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. What is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? A lot of people come to me who are serious, devout Christians and say, I'm not sure, but I think I might've committed the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And I can't be pardoned. Here's what I tell these people. The very fact you're coming to me concerned about this tells me you have not committed this sin. Because if you're out there listening, and as I'm telling you the story of Ananias and Sapphira, I'm keeping you back. If you're thinking like, wow, yeah, there was a tie. I can't remember. Listen, if this is bothering you or convicting you, number one, I would say make it right. But number two, I would say you're not Ananias and Sapphira. Because why? Because the Holy Spirit is doing what? Convicting you. You know who this is for? Those people who can't get convicted by the Holy Spirit. They're just gonna stay here and lie and cheat and deceive. And every time the Holy Spirit comes, they wouldn't know the Holy Spirit if it was wearing a red hat and big white feather coming down the aisle. They wouldn't know. What does God say? I gotta get rid of you? I don't know if these people went to heaven or not, but I will say this, if you can be convicted by the Holy Spirit, you have not committed this offense. So the two reasons why God deals with these people that are in this state, remember they were part of the group. They were in the church. They just weren't committed. God will protect his church. Why? Because it's his church. And you say, pastor, does God still protect his church? What do you think? Do you think God says, oh, our times are changing. What are we in the year 2025? I got to lighten up on this. I've been watching the TV. I got to get with it here. I got to catch up with the times. What was I thinking about all that? Homosexuals. What was I thinking? Y'all listening to me? Does God still protect his church? Let me ask you this. Are those same three players still involved? The righteous, the wicked, and the uncommitted? Here's the bad news. If you haven't totally surrendered and totally laid down, you're both going. I said you're both going. You'll have a, I got to get these hardback notebooks. And sometimes I can't close them. The cover just doesn't close. Won't lay down. And I keep working it and working it. Hopefully one day I'll get that cover to lay down. But you know what happens if that cover doesn't lay down? I just throw out the notebook. You know, the Lord's been trying to get you to lie down in total surrender. And you keep bucking up. Lord lays you down, you keep rising up. My advice to you, lay down and stay down. I said lay down and stay down. Because only the righteous are going to remain. The rest get swept away. Church discipline, should we still do it? Yeah! Here's what Paul says in Thessalonica. He says, now we command you, brother, not suggest, it's a command, that in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother, notice it's a brother or sister, who is walking in idleness. What does it mean? They have not committed to walk with me. They're not aggressively, passionately pursuing me. They're just walking, saying I'm a Christian, but I'm not going to do anything. Listen, they're not walking in what? The traditions that they receive. They're not walking by the Bible. Do you know why I preach the way I preach? Do you know why I turn up the heat every Sunday? Because I want a big congregation. I want to make you all feel good. No, I want to turn up the fire. And you're going to come here, and if you're gold, you'll thank me. Because as the heat burns, the purifications are coming off of you. I'm not going to pamper your sin. I want your sin to burn away. If you're gold, you will thank me for turning up the heat. But guess what? If you're made of wood, hay, stubble, guess what? When I turn up the heat, you'll be consumed. You'll go away. I don't like that pastor. I think he's a little, I don't know what's his problem, but I don't like him. It's not positive enough, I don't know what he is. Those who turn aside to their crooked ways, they go back to the way they were. The Lord will lead them away with evildoers. In the New Testament, John put it this way. Listen, in the last hour, let me just tell you, as you've heard it, that the Antichrist is coming, and now many Antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that in the last, listen to what he says here, You know why this church is small? I'll give you a lot of reasons, but one of it is this. I don't allow you to sit there You can come as you are, but you can't stay as you are. I said you can come as you are, but you can't stay. And eventually you'll feel that, you'll feel that friction. My way, what I'm hearing here, and it's going to be my way, and you'll leave. Let me give you a prophetic vision that the Lord gave me before this church even started. And I was mauling, and the Lord was telling me that he wanted me to plant a church. But he was giving me specific visions of this church. And here's what he showed me. And I'm closing with this. He showed me this river, more like a stream, but it was fairly deep. This one doesn't look deep, but the one that I saw was very deep. And he says there were people. Can you see the people? They're sitting on chairs, and they're coming down the stream. And he says, this is like a lot of churches. People are riding on a river, and they think that they're in the river, but they're just on top of it. But they feel comfortable riding on top of it. They're coming to church. They're hearing messages. They're punching their clock. He says, here's what the church is supposed to do. See this thing right here? That is a line that the church reaches over this stream. And guess what happens when a chair comes to that line? Well, first of all, the Lord showed me this net that was below the surface and the waterfall, which represented, in this case, destruction. And he said, if they don't fall into the water and get caught by the net, they will go over with all of the rest. The religious people who think that they're just gonna come to church and that's gonna be good enough. No, you have to, and what the image was is the chair hit that line and they fell in the water. Do you know what the water represents? Spirit. You need to have the Spirit of God within you. You need to have the Spirit of God upon you. That's what baptism is. The Spirit of God is over you. It's to your left, to your right, it's above your head, it's below your feet. You are immersed in the Spirit. You've been baptized in the Spirit. If you stay on that chair and you don't go in that water, you get swept away. And the Lord said, when you start this church, you knock as many of those chairs into the water as you can. He said this, you replace tradition with fire. You replace tradition with fire. The greatest enemy that God has to spirituality is tradition. It's the reason why the Pharisees could not see Christ. They were bound in tradition. The people that are sitting on the chairs are okay with tradition. They just need to get in the water. Prayerful takeaways today, listen. Don't be one of those people that the Lord has to take away. Number one. Number two, if you feel like you might be one of those people, repent, make it right with God and others. Know that you cannot turn aside. You cannot go back to any way that isn't straight or narrow. Third, continually surrender to his work. every day, and then finally, listen, this is the good part, the righteous will always walk in the blessed security of the new life and they have nothing to fear. Be in this camp. Be among the righteous. Blessings or judgment, it's your decision. Deuteronomy, I've set before you life and death, blessings and cursings. I'm gonna encourage you, therefore, to choose life. Thanks for listening to this message from River Mountain Church. If you'd like some more information, visit our website, rivermountainchurch.org.