those terms. Man, she's really poor in spirit. Have you ever heard that? No. My anecdotal evidence watching you, the head shake, is that no one's ever heard that. The reason is, is because we tend to extol the opposite. We tend to look favorably on people who don't miss a beat in their self-confidence and self-assertiveness. A few years ago, I saw a Green Bay Packers linebacker or lineman who was 6'8", 325, from Poland, and his T-shirt said, actually, I am kind of a big deal. And you know, That is the inner heart attitude of most of us, most of the time. And I think if we were honest, we would correct the pop culture proverb, it's not about me, and saying, actually, it is about me. Or in talking to someone, we'd say, if we were honest, we'd say, enough about me. Let's talk about me. And we have this opposite attitude of what it means to be poor in spirit. But Jesus starts out his Sermon on the Mount by saying, the really blessed people, the happy ones, those who are favored by God, are those who are poor in spirit. You know, when we describe somebody, we're far more likely to, with maybe a kind of a quiet voice and a little bit of disapproval, say, well, you know, he's a needy person. When actually Jesus is saying, blessed are those who in their inner man, in their inner woman, their inner person, they know their poverty. They look inside and they say, actually, I'm not a big deal. Actually, I'm not the one. I'm not the main thing. Actually, I'm not what it's all about. And it's not the hokey pokey either. It's not me. It's not the things that I'm so concerned about and so wrapped up in. Jesus said, blessed is that kind of person. Blessed is that kind of person who is poor in spirit. And thankfully, God's Word has given us other passages that shine a light on what that means. And so often the Bible puts things in prayer form that are what we really need to pray. And so if you're in your Bible, go ahead and turn to Psalm 119 again. We'll read all 24 verses or the 16 that we've covered so far, as well as the eight that we're going to focus on this morning. Psalm 119, verses 1 through 24. And I'm reading from the New King James. Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with the whole heart. They also do no iniquity. They walk in his ways. You've commanded us to keep your precepts diligently. Oh, that my ways were directed to keep your statutes. Then I would not be ashamed when I look into all your commandments. I will praise you with uprightness of heart when I learn your righteous judgments. I will keep your statutes. Oh, do not forsake me utterly. How can a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed according to your word with my whole heart, I have sought you. Oh, let me not wander from your commandments, your word. I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord. Teach me your statutes with my lips. I have declared all the judgments of your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of your testimonies as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and contemplate your ways. I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word. Verse 17, deal bountifully with your servant that I may live and keep your word. Open my eyes that I may see wondrous things from your law. I am a stranger in the earth. Do not hide your commandments from me. My soul breaks with longing for your judgments at all times. You rebuke the proud, the cursed who stray from your commandments. Remove from me reproach and contempt, for I've kept your testimonies. Princes also sit and speak against me, but your servant meditates on your statutes Your testimonies also are my delight and my counselors This is God's Word This third stanza of Psalm 119 that begins with the Hebrew letter gimel the third letter of the Hebrew alphabet is takes us to a different place. And if you're following along in this psalm that we've suggested is written by David, probably over the course of his life, maybe like a work of art that he kept chiseling on, kept on weaving a few more strands, we've seen these different movements where he starts out by saying, Lord, here is the pathway that is a pathway of blessing. It's the man whose life is firing on all eight cylinders. He's complete. He's mature. He's someone who walks in your word, who, like a footpath, puts one foot in front of the other. And every time he plants a foot, he's planting it in that pathway that your word outlines. That's the man who's blessed. He's seeking you with his whole heart. And then in the second stanza, he's saying, So how does a person walk this kind of pathway? How does a young man in particular do that because young men in particular are prone to go astray? Well, it's the kind of young man who says, I am going to live my life guarding it, making sure that the rumble strip that I follow, you know what a rumble strip is? That's that thing that barks at you when you leave the path. The rumble strip of my life is going to be the precepts of God, the statutes of God, the testimonies of God, the judgments of God, the way of God, the law of God. God's word will be my lines that I keep my life between. And then in that second stanza that begins with the Hebrew letter Beth, He says, I will, I have, I will, I have. And you hear his heart saying these resolutions to do things God's way. When he gets to the third stanza, it's almost like that sensation you have when you approach the cash register at Walmart or Aldi and you realize you have no wallet. That's a bad feeling. You know, you start padding every pocket and even places you don't have pockets. You run through your mind and think, oh, what have I got in the car? Nothing. Except take that sensation a bit further and think, oh, my pockets are empty. My car is empty. As a matter of fact, there are no credit cards at home. There's nothing. There's nothing with which to pay. And what the psalmist David comes to is a place of saying, you know what? I don't have what I need to walk this path. He comes to a place of being poor in spirit and saying, God, even as I set out to plant my feet in this pathway, I find myself poverty stricken. Now, let me just cut to the chase and get to the end of the sermon in case you lose concentration and say, do you know why Jesus blesses poverty and spirit? I'll tell you why. No one goes to heaven without it. If you spend your life saying, you know what? I have what I need. I am able to please God. I've got the resources. I'll obey everything. Or maybe like some people, I don't really need forgiveness because I'm better than other people. My good works that way. My bad, I'm going to strike a deal with God. You don't go to heaven. Heaven is reserved for those who walk through the door of faith. And that faith is, I am a sinner. I have nothing to contribute to this transaction except my sin. And I'm dependent on Christ to save me. I can't live right. I can't think right. I can't do the things I should do. I can't even believe right. I'm dependent on Him for everything. And Jesus puts His first blessing on that quality of life because it is indispensable for going to heaven. And so much of our lives is this process of learning that particular quality. Now, let me not be misunderstood. Being poor in spirit is not the same thing as being weak. Remember what it says about John the Baptist in that description in Luke chapter 1? He's out there eating that high fiber diet, locusts and honey. And it says in Luke 1, verse 80, that he was in the wilderness growing strong in spirit. Being poor in spirit is not the same thing as being weak, but rather it is someone who knows where his strength and his resources and anything good that he has comes from. Psalm 16.1 says, Preserve me, O Lord, for in you I put my trust. I have no good apart from you. I don't have anything, the psalmist says in Psalm 16. In this psalm, he twice refers to himself as God's servant. Look at verse 17, or I should say this stanza. He twice calls himself God's servant. In verse 17, and then again in verse 23. Your servant, your bondservant. And my outline for this psalm starts with the statement that we need to depend on God like a servant, like a slave. I don't think we have much acquaintance with this way of life because, thankfully, we are a country that has abolished slavery. We don't have a real ability to relate even to being someone else's servant. We don't often have that experience. But not too many generations ago that the United States had towns that were called company towns. If you ever go to Western North Carolina, you'll come across, or Central North Carolina, you'll come across a town called Kannapolis. North Carolina. Anybody ever been there or heard of Kannapolis, North Carolina? It's dying. It's hollowing out because it was a company town. It was a town where the company provided the housing, the insurance, the grocery store. Some of you who have been in the military know what this is like. It was a town where the plant, the textile mill, provided everything that everybody needed. A lot of coal mining towns were this way. And when the mine played out, that's the end of the town. And in the case of Kannapolis, North Carolina, when that plays out, that's the end of all those resources. And those people who had looked to the company for everything they needed had to look elsewhere. Well, we need to learn to depend on the Lord like a servant And, you know, I had a vivid picture of this or of this idea of dependence yesterday as I was contemplating our nephew, Charlie. And I was thinking about this son who's become a son, who's become a Klaus by adoption, by going through the foster care system, foster to adopt. And as I was looking at him, I thought about his future. And I thought about how he is dependent on the Klaus family for everything. His clothing, his education, his vocabulary, his candy. all those good things, any education that he's going to have in the future, his upbringing. He's utterly dependent. And you can see the psalmist as he walks through. Now, by the way, if you're wondering, did the psalmist just kind of say, well, I need something that starts with a gimel. So let's say deal bountifully. That starts with a G, a C in the Hebrew language. Let's say open. Open starts with a G in the Hebrew language. Let's just find a bunch of loosely connected words so that we can have this acrostic poem. Far from it. There is a movement in his thought here and he artfully gives you these words. So this is why, if you ever wondered why Drake and other pastors love alliteration, alliteration is awesome. It's because this is a biblical model for us. He put these things in alliterative order, all beginning with the same letter, partially so that you could remember them. But he's meditating on the poverty of spirit that he feels when he sets out to walk God's way. So he says, this word, deal bountifully with your servant. This word is a word that means to provide fully everything that's needed. It's also the word that when it's used of a mother and her child, it's the word that means to wean. where the child goes from what his mother provides to other sources of food. When you wean that child, you know what the mother has done? She's provided fully for that child. She's given it everything it needs. And it's not a coincidence that in this moment, the psalmist likens himself to a child who is dependent on his mother and says, Provide fully for me. Give me everything I need. Because if you don't, I won't have it. He admits his poverty. He says, deal bountifully with your servant. And he doesn't say, so that I can have a happy life. He says, so that I can live. Look at the next verb there. Provide everything I need so that I can stay alive. Stay alive means not die. Provide what I need, God, because if you don't, I won't have it. Do you hear the dependence that he is expressing? And what am I going to do if you keep me alive? I'm going to keep your word. Now, we mentioned that there are a couple of words that are translated keep. But over and over again, he uses a word, Shemar, that has this military watchman-like attitude. 21 times he uses it in Psalm 119. I'm going to keep my watch, my vigil, my sentry duty, my alert on your word. I'm going to keep your word if you will keep me alive. So he depends on God like a servant would depend on his master, like a child depends on his mother. He puts himself in that childlike posture. Now, we might think of ourselves as somewhat valuable servants to the Lord, and maybe sometimes you think that the Lord's fortunate to have you on his team, but he's going to start qualifying what kind of a servant he is. First of all, first point I would mention is we need to depend on the Lord like a servant who knows that he is blind. There are various kinds of blindness. The Keens were here when the power went out. I was at play practice when the power went out Thursday. You know, you can still have play practice. Everybody turns on their cell phone flashlights and they put them by your feet and you can still do various things when the lights go out. That's one kind of blindness. There's a military blindness such as what happened to Robert E. Lee when he blundered into a little crossroads called Gettysburg and Jeb Stewart was off doing gallant things but leaving General Lee blind. Did not know that the whole Union Army was in front of him because he was militarily blind and we sometimes have a strategic blindness like that. The housing crash of 2008, there were warning signs but people didn't see it coming or they would have behaved differently. But the kind of blindness that he's talking about is a blindness where there is a veil over the eyes. Something has happened to him spiritually where he knows that he can't see. There was a blind couple in the church that Susan and I served when we were single, and they would periodically have members of the church over to help them write their checks. And they would say, write the check for this amount to this creditor. Write $432. And then after you wrote the checks, one of the blind couple, Lynn, who could see just a little bit, would do this with the check. She would put it right by her eye because she was so blind. And I remember the day that we took them to have their dog put to sleep, and they said, put our hands on the dog, guide our hands, and let us feel him. They were utterly physically blind, dependent because of the veil that was over their eyes. In 2 Corinthians, if you would turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 3, there is a kind of veil that is over people's eyes spiritually. when they come to the word of God. Second Corinthians chapter three and verse 14. Second Corinthians three, verse 14, but their minds were blinded. For until this day, the same veil remains unlifted in the reading of the Old Testament because the veil is taken away in Christ. But even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. Nevertheless, when one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now, the Lord is the spirit where the spirit of the Lord there is where the spirit of the Lord is. There is liberty. But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the spirit of the Lord. Skip down to chapter four in verse three. Not only is there a veil over the scripture, there's oftentimes a veil over the gospel. Verse three says, If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. And so those who are outside of Christ have a blindness. Ephesians 4.18 says, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the blindness that is in them. There's a spiritual blindness. And the psalmist, even as a believer, here in verse 18 says, open my eyes. Literally, take away the covering from my eyes that I may see wondrous things out of your law. Now, this word that's translated wondrous is sometimes translated wonderful. It's the word that we find in this account of Samson's parents. Why do you ask my name? Because it's it's wondrous. It's marvelous. Or when God says to Moses that he's going to strike Egypt and I will show all my wonders. I'm going to do wonderful things. And the psalmist says, you know what? I don't penetrate the mysteries, the marvelous things of your word, without your assistance. There are marvels here. There are wonders here. There are things that are true. But if you don't open my eyes, I won't see them. What was the other name for the Middle Ages? It was the dark ages. Now historians debate that. They weren't quite so dark and you had a flicker of light here and there and they were inventing fireworks and other neat things in China, I'm sure, or other technology was making a start. But what was dark was chiefly the lack of the light of the knowledge of God's Word. Not only had they lost the Bible, they'd even lost the ability to read the original languages of the Bible. And you hear our phrase, hocus-pocus. Hocus-pocus is a mockery of how when you went to church, it was all in Latin and nobody knew what was going on. It was just a bunch of hocus-pocus. That's the Latin phrase for mumbo-jumbo. We don't know what they're saying. It's just a bunch of hocus-pocus. And there was ignorance. This church had a fiber from the burial shroud of Jesus, and for the right price, you could touch it. This church had a jar or a vial of the Apostle Thomas' blood. This church had a splinter from the shinbone of John the Baptist. And if you pay the right price, you can rub your finger on it and get a good feeling. This church here in Rome has stairs, and if you'll just pray going up your knees on them, God might look favorably and reduce your time in purgatory from 3,000 years to 300. Ignorance, darkness, blindness, and that kind of a quirky scholar, Erasmus, in Rotterdam, Holland, starts opening up the light, and he realizes how foolishly the church is behaving. He writes a book about it called In Praise of Folly, because he's like, this is what's going on in our churches, in our culture. We are behaving like fools because we don't have light, because we're blind. And when men like William Tyndale said, we're going to give people God's Word in their language, we're going to teach it so that the boy who's pushing the plow can sing the scriptures, light came. And light was precious, because it saved people from their blindness. It saved people from their ignorance. And how ironic it is that in our day, we want to set this behind us and rush, pell-mell, back into the darkness. We've got better wisdom than that old Bible. We've got better things to do. Let's give away the light and go back to darkness. Let's try paganism again. You know, paganism was cool. It was fun. That blindness, that darkness, it's kind of attractive. Let's be neo-pagans. Rushing back into the darkness. throwing light behind. The psalmist says, I'm a servant. Not only am I a servant, but I'm a blind servant. You realize David was saying this about half the Bible that you have. Lord, your word is wonderful. It's got treasures in it. Would you open my eyes? I'm a blind servant unless you enlighten me, illuminate me. There are wonderful things in your law. Show them to me. Not only is he a blind servant, but he says in verse 19, I'm a foreign servant. Look at verse 19. I am a stranger, a foreigner. It's that it's that Hebrew word gear. He starts the sentence with gear. Am I in the earth gear means sojourner, foreigner, stranger. Have you ever been? in a foreign country and known the helplessness of not knowing the language or the customs. When my dad went to visit the German branch of Bible Memory in 1980, or I'm sorry, 2000, I went with him in the year 2000. And I remember being on the train platform in Stuttgart and we thought that we would be able to navigate the train schedule well and get down to the Bible Memory office in Germany about 50 miles south of Stuttgart. And we looked at that train schedule and we could not understand it. And we were reduced to standing on the platform, it's comical now, but standing on the platform hailing passersby, does anyone here speak English? And thankfully there were many who did. But that's a little bit of the helplessness of a foreigner. Now, God's Word is very clear on how Israel was to treat the foreigners in their land. They were to have mercy on them and they were to remember that they were foreigners, they were strangers. Turn with me back to Leviticus chapter 25. Leviticus chapter 25 and verse 23. I know we feel pretty at home in this country, in this town, but look at Leviticus 25, 23, where God says about his people, the land shall not be sold permanently for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners. There's the word with me. We translate that word sometimes pilgrims. You're foreigners here. You're sojourners here. This is not your true home. And if that was said of Israel, the promised land, how much more is that true of us? He says in 1 Peter 2, I beg you as strangers and foreigners, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. You're a pilgrim here. Don't get too enamored with the things of this world, good as it is, priceless as it is, sweet as it is. You're a stranger and you're a foreigner here. Now, what's interesting, if you go back to Psalm 119, where he says, I am a stranger in the land or in the earth. Who was David? What does his Wikipedia article say, first sentence? King. Wait, I thought he owned the place. He did. But he realized this is not yet home. This is not yet where I belong. I think he'd done some scripture memory. He knew Leviticus 25, 23. He knew he was a stranger and a foreigner. You know, it's wonderful when you find somebody on a train platform who can guide you, who kind of knows the way where you need to go. But we are strangers and foreigners, many times surrounded with people who don't know the way. don't know the way home, as Spurgeon writes. So David says, not only am I a servant who depends on you because I'm blind, I also depend on you because I'm a pilgrim. I am a stranger here and I've got the kinds of needs that pilgrims have. Look with me over at Hebrews chapter 11. Here's the attitude that servants of God have. Hebrews chapter 11 and verses 13 through 16. Hebrews 11, 13 through 16. Talking about people who walk by faith and it says this, these all died in faith. not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, were assured of them." Hebrews 11, 13. Embrace them and confess that they were what? Strangers and pilgrims on the earth. Do you realize that one of the effects of the Word of God really taking control of your heart is it will alienate you from this world and you'll feel yourself pulling away. The things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace. I don't belong here. And when God's word has its way with you, it begins to alienate you and you have to pull away and start looking for something else. You turn away from the best this world offers and say, it doesn't satisfy me. Look, keep reading in Hebrews 11. They embrace them and confess they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, verse 14. For those who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland. And truly, if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had the opportunity to return. But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Beware of being too settled here, too content here, too smug and satisfied here. They desire a heavenly country, therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them. In Psalm 17 and verses 14 and 15, David is praying and he says, Lord, deliver me from those who are satisfied with this life, from men, 17, 14, who have their portion in this life. As for me, verse 15, I will be satisfied when I awake in your likeness." You see, when God's Word has its place in your heart like it did in the psalmists, you begin to feel homesick because you realize that the best that this life offers is not enough. That your heart and your whole being were made for something better. So David says, I have to depend on the Lord like a servant who is blind, I have to depend on the Lord like a servant who is a stranger here. I don't belong here. I don't have the resources that all the native-born people have. And so I need to depend on the Lord in a way that's foreign to them. Go back to Psalm 119. He says, I have to depend on the Lord like a servant who's blind. I have to depend on the Lord like a servant who is a stranger. And I have to depend on the Lord like a servant who is broken. Look what he says in verse 20. My soul breaks with longing. This word breaks is a word that means to grind down into smaller bits, to chafe and irritate and grind away at something. My soul breaks with longing for your judgments. once in a long while. Oh, no, I'm sorry, that's the reversed vision translation. My soul breaks with longing for your judgments at all times. It's no fun to experience brokenness in your life, but the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart. These, O God, you will not despise." God, He says, when I look at what my heart needs, I experience brokenness. My soul breaks with longing for your judgments at all times. Now, we talked about this earlier, but remember these words that all refer to the Word of God. God's judgments are His legal verdicts. You know, many times our Supreme Court justices kind of put a finger in the wind. Intellectually, they lick their finger and they put a finger up in the wind to see which way the wind is blowing so that they can come down on controversial subjects and give a judgment. But the psalmist says, you know what, I'm longing for what you have to say about the controversial issues of my day, of my culture, of my heart. My heart's breaking wanting to know your truth, not just to have the results of the latest surveys or opinion polls. I want your judgments. It's interesting that in this psalm, he calls God's word, the law, 25 times Torah. He calls it God's testimonies. And that's like when you put God in the witness box, he calls it God's testimonies, 22 times God's precepts. That's the things, the rules that he's enumerated 21 times. Statutes, those are the things God's engraved in stone. He calls God's words statutes 22 times. He calls God's words, His commands, His mitzvah, as in Bar Mitzvah, 20 times. He calls God's word, God's judgments, 23 times. And He calls God's word, His ways, 4 times. He keeps changing the angle of the microscope a little bit to give us the idea of what He treasures. So he says, I depend on the Lord like a servant who's blind. I depend on the Lord like a servant who's a stranger. And I'm also suffering. Now, why did David suffer? Now, I'll just say my strongest evidence that this is David's psalm is because in Psalm 19, which we know to be a psalm of David, he uses these words for the Bible. He calls it law, statutes, testimonies, ordinances, precepts, judgments. And so it sounds like the same guy and the circumstances sound like it. But we know that David suffered in his family a little bit of parental neglect, that his dad didn't think it fitting when the most important man in Israel comes to the house to invite him in for the meal, because it's not going to be him who's going to matter in this anointing ceremony we're about to have. We know that he suffered the false accusations of King Saul. We know that when he went to live with the Philistines, he suffered persecution from them and persecution from his own people. And he suffered the hardship of living in caves and kind of having to scratch in the rocks to stay alive. He says there in verse 21 You rebuke the proud the cursed who stray from your commandments And it's like he has that same group of people in mind when he says in verse 22, please God take away from me reproach and contempt What's reproach? Well reproach is disgrace and Have you ever been? Slandered in a way that brought you disgrace. That's hard to bear. I You know what's even harder to bear is when you deserve it. Have you ever been in a situation where you think, you know what? These people saw me in a very unflattering light. They saw me in my worst moments. Did David know anything about that? He did. And he doesn't say what kind of reproach to remove. He says, God, please take away from me reproach and contempt, for I have kept, I've held on to your testimonies, to those words that you say when you're put in the witness box. God, take away from me that reproach and that contempt. Now, have you ever struggled with how the godless seem to prosper? David struggled with that as well. Maybe you remember the words of Psalm 73, not written by David, but where he talks about the ungodly and he said, they're always at ease. The ungodly, they don't have any pangs when they die. They've got everything going well for them. And David is saying, Lord, please take away from me the disgrace, the shame, the reproach that I experience. I'm broken, I'm suffering because it looks like the godless are prospering. And yeah, I've done things wrong, but when are you going to vindicate me because I've put all the eggs, all my eggs in this basket of your word. I've built my life on this. You've heard me say in the past or in a previous sermon, you have to be careful what hill you take your stand on. You don't want to die on the wrong hill. You don't want to find yourself defending the wrong ground. And David says, Lord, I have staked my claim on your word. And look at these people around me who are heaping disgrace and contempt on me. And I'm embarrassed by what I'm experiencing. We know that it's people who are doing this because he has the word also. The word also begins verses 23 and 24. Also princes sit and speak against me. This week marked the anniversary of the day when the Vice President of the United States stepped out onto a field and shot a man and mortally wounded him in 1804. It was Aaron Burr shooting Alexander Hamilton. And it was a matter of honor. Hamilton could never walk away from a personal insult himself, so he knew about it. But this is actually Aaron Burr saying, you've slandered me, Hamilton. You're going to take those words back or you're going to answer for them on the field of honor. You've slandered me and I take that seriously. So we're going to settle this with guns. Hamilton fired into the air. Burr shot to kill and did. But you look at what the psalmist says in verse 23. He says, you know, princes, very eminent people, very important people, Talk down about me. They slander me." And what's his response? But your servant meditates on your statutes. Do you see a little practical bit of wisdom there for when you're slandered or when you're exposed to public shame in some way? Just boil it down real quick and say, let God answer for you. Let God vindicate you. That's what servants of the Lord do. I'm suffering. I'm broken. I'm wishing, God, that you would bring the truth to light because bad people are getting away with it. They're not suffering for the wrong things they've done. I suffer for the things I've done. He says, your servant meditates on your statutes. I mentioned two weeks ago that William Wilberforce, Great Britain's Prime Minister when slavery was abolished, had this whole psalm memorized. He writes that he walked home from Parliament reciting the 119th Psalm with great comfort. And I bet he loved this verse because they made fun of him in Parliament. They made fun of his idea that Africans ought to enjoy the same rights as other Englishmen. They made fun of him bringing up the same bill and getting defeated year after year after year. And he knew what it was like to have princes sit and speak against me. And some of you know what it's like to be slandered unjustly, to have things about you, both true and untrue, unflattering things, brought to light. Follow the psalmist example. He says I meditate on the things you've engraved in stone your statutes are my meditation your testimonies also are my delight and Literally first 24 says my men of counsel Do you have counselors? There's much wisdom in a multitude of counselors. With the well-advised is wisdom. But I wonder how often we turn to people too quickly, or we go to somebody who has the shingle hanging over his door, counselor, and they have a place. We need people who understand the complexity of the human mind and body. But the psalmist says, my first line of defense when it comes to wisdom are your testimonies. Verse 24, your testimonies are my men of counsel. This church is blessed with wise people. And I think sometimes, you know, that sometimes I just want to come and eavesdrop on your conversations because you're wise and you know things I don't know. And if I had to make some hard decisions, I would probably convene or, you know, pick the brains of eight or nine of you before I made that decision. But, you know, first of all, I need God's testimonies to be my men of counsel. Remember that great title of the Messiah in Isaiah chapter 9, and his name shall be called what? Wonderful counselor. Now those titles are sometimes taken separately, sometimes put together that works either way. He is wonderful and he is a counselor and he's a wonderful counselor. Your testimonies are my men of counsel. Lord, I depend on you to provide for me like a servant. You must meet all my needs the way a weaned child has had its needs met by his mother. I depend on you as a servant who is actually sightless unless you give me light. I depend on you like a servant who's actually a stranger in this country. I don't know the laws, the languages, the customs. I need your help. Does anyone here speak Heavenese? I need somebody who understands what I'm supposed to do in this foreign country that I live in. And God, I depend on you like a servant who's broken. I'm poor in spirit. My soul breaks with longing partially because of the shame that I've been brought into by those who sit and speak against me. And they talk, and they talk, and they talk. And I'm going to meditate on your statutes because your testimonies are my men of counsel. There's a proverb, I didn't look up the reference, that says, he who pampers his servant will have him as a son in the end. Isn't that cool that that's exactly what God does? I'm not a particularly valuable servant to the Lord. I'm sightless, I'm a stranger, and I'm suffering. But He not only takes me as His servant, He takes me as His son. That's what happens when, like Charlie Klaus, you get taken out of a life that's headed for destruction and brought into a family where you're cared for and given everything that you need. And what a blessing it is when we as children and as children of God learn to look to our Father for those things that we need. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for what? for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Let's pray. Father, we bless you because, Lord, you've given us the privilege to not only know you as our master, as our Lord, but also as our Father. And we are those servants that we read about in this stanza of Psalm 119. We're blind, we're strangers, and we are broken. Father, we ask you to vindicate us, to take away our reproach and contempt. Lord, to take away our blindness and take away, Lord, our needs that we can't meet in this country of our pilgrimage. And Father, I pray that you would help us to not only Lord know our need but to embrace that when we're poor in spirit We can turn to you more readily and trust you and depend on you for all these things and even more Thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ who though he knew no sin was made sin for us That we might be made the righteousness of God in him. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen