As most of you know, I'm sure, we're juggling a few series of messages, especially now during the summer. During the school year in our adult class, we're looking at the 1689 Confession as a way or an excuse, if you will, of studying systematic theology. And in our morning worship during the school year, we're going through the Book of Acts. And both of those things we've kind of put in abeyance just for the summertime, and we're quickly coming to the end of the summer. And for the summertime, at least for those times that I have been scheduled to preach, I have been looking at with you from Matthew 4 and also Luke 4, which we'll do again today, but not this morning. We're going to finish up our study on the temptation of Christ this afternoon as we look at verse 11 of Matthew 4, where the devil departs and the angels come and minister to our Lord after his ordeal. So we'll conclude that series of messages this evening, or this afternoon. So then what am I going to do today? It's too soon to get back to Acts. And as I was thinking about it over my summer vacation, I realized, you know, it would be nice to have a kind of series running in the background. Something that's not every week. Something that's always there. especially on those Sundays where I can't get the Acts sermon done on time because there's just too much. And so there needs to be something kind of in the waiting, something that could be used not just as a spot sermon, but something that could be an ongoing study. Well, I received some help in coming up with a really good idea. I did not come up with the idea, Pastor Tom Lyon did. I was spending some time with him and his study for about two or three hours. And we were just talking about how there's so much scripture and so much to preach and so little time. And I'm glad to know that all of eternity will be spent opening up more of the treasures and the wonders of God's word. but one of the series he said he would always have liked to have preached, but now he's coming to the end of his ministry, is a series on the Psalms, not a comprehensive study, of course, that would take probably more years than I have left, but a series where each Psalm is looked at and one particular phrase is pulled out and examined. And the thing about this kind of series, and I really liked this, I'm giving him credit by the way, and I didn't steal it, I took it by permission. But the neat thing about this kind of series, if God wills, is that the phrase or the verse that I'm going to pick from each psalm is precisely one that you would never have guessed. There are so many overlooked phrases in the psalms. Most of us who have been Christians for any length of time have read through the Psalms many times. In fact, if you do what I do, I read several Psalms every day and then one proverb that corresponds with the day of the calendar. And that's just a habit. And so you're used to having verses just pop off the page at you, the familiar ones. The ones that are readily understandable, the ones that you've heard preached on many times before, perhaps have read devotionals. Well, I am purposely going to avoid picking the verses that are the most popular and the ones that stick out from the page. But as a result of this study, hopefully in the future, they will stick out on the page more than they have in the past. So if you're going to try to guess from time to time what I'm going to pick, what phrase, what verse, you're most likely going to be wrong. And I don't want any gambling going on in the church, wagering with what phrase is he going to pick from the next Psalm. Well, I want to start today, and I can't really promise when the next time will be when we come to Psalm 2, but I do want to start with Psalm 1 today and look at a particular phrase in this chapter, which is often overlooked. Psalm 1. Let me read the psalm and then say a few words of introduction, and then I will reveal which phrase we'll concentrate on. By the way, we've just sung Psalm 1, hymn number 446 is Psalm 1 put to meter and to music. We read in God's word, Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Psalm 1. may have been the very psalm that was in the back of our Lord's mind when he began his Sermon on the Mount. What's the first word that comes out of Jesus' mouth in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5? Blessed. It's a psalm of blessing and the Sermon on the Mount starts out with blessings. Blessed is and you fill in the blank, he has several of them listed at the very outset of the Sermon on the Mount. And I take these two passages as being parallel to one another in some very important ways. Blessed is the man, they're called beatitudes, and I don't like that. It's a historical, traditional way of calling it. Beatitude originally meant blessing, but people today don't think that is what beatitude means. Most people have this rather silly way of thinking of the Beatitudes, and that is to have these attitudes, be these things. As if all Jesus was saying in the Beatitudes was, if you can be these things, then you can be in my kingdom. You can be in my kingdom if you be these things. You can stay in my kingdom if you continue to be these things. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. You see, if you can be these things, then you can be in my kingdom. Well, that is absolutely opposite of how we should understand the Beatitudes, and it's absolutely opposite to how we should understand Psalm 1. We're approaching it all wrong if we come to Psalm 1 and see law, law, law. It's not law, it's gospel. Because the word blessed is not a prescription for you, something for you to do, It's a description of what God has done in you already. You are blessed by God if you are one who no longer is wicked. You have been blessed by God's sovereign monergistic grace. If you are one who has a hunger and thirst for the word of God and you delight in it and you meditate in it day and night, you are blessed by God's grace if you are one of these because these are rare among the children of men. And so Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, as well as David here in Psalm 1, or whoever wrote Psalm 1, the Holy Spirit ultimately, is not telling us what we're to go and do in order to be in the good graces of God. It's not prescribing to us law and rules or even attitudes that we're to cultivate, but rather it's describing the person whom God has sovereignly by his own grace, irrespective of our works. has done for us in our hearts. Natural man does not seek God. Natural man does not hunger and thirst after righteousness. Natural man is not poor in spirit, he's self-righteous. Natural man is not meek. You see, natural man is not one who delights in the word of God and meditates day and night. So how is it that any of us could match the description here. It's only by grace. We are blessed. That means God has done something to us and in us. And so let us not approach Psalm 1, or the Sermon on the Mount for that matter, with that kind of faulty thinking. It's a description of God's true people who have been changed by grace, not a prescription. Now, do we all meditate in the Word of God day and night as much as we'd like to? No. Do we always stay away from the counsel of the ungodly? No, we should. But nevertheless, those who are truly God's people have been fundamentally changed and decisively drawn out of the world and made to be different. And the very fact that they're different shows that they've been blessed. They've been blessed not because they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. They were first blessed and then the evidences of that blessing are seen in their lives. Well, Psalm 1 in the Sermon on the Mount, at least the Beatitudes section of the Sermon on the Mount, Psalm 1 and that section do have similarities, but they also have differences. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lists the blessed characteristics of those who are in the kingdom already by grace. And he lists them one at a time, blessed are those that are poor in spirit and so on, but he doesn't contrast He could have. He could have said, blessed are the poor in spirit. That word poor means bankrupt, morally bankrupt in their own thinking. They realize they have nothing to give God of their own merit. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Cursed are those who are self-righteous. You see, he could have said that. And in fact, in the Sermon on the Mount later on, he does contrast. with all of those beatitudes the opposite in his preaching, because it was a mixed multitude to whom he was preaching. But here in Psalm 1, there is that contrast, very stark. The first three verses are a description of the blessed man, or as it can be also put, the righteous man, the one who has been made so by the grace of God. And then in the last three verses of Psalm 1, we have the wicked described. both their character but also their end. So you have this Hebrew parallelism, if you will, where there is, on the one hand, the godly, the righteous, the blessed, and then the unrighteous, the wicked, the ungodly. There's that contrast. Now that's important for us to see because we won't be able to understand the phrase we're going to look at this morning without that idea of contrast, and the Hebrew parallelism that's present in this particular psalm. But I'll have you notice there is an exception to this. The first three verses describe the blessed man, the godly man. The last three verses describe the wicked one. But you'll notice there's the exception of verse six and the very first part of verse six. All of a sudden the righteous man reappears. in contrast to the wicked man. There's nothing said of the wicked man in terms of his character in the first three verses. But there is something said of the righteous man in the last three verses. And it says in verse six, for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. That's my phrase for today. The Lord knows the way of the righteous. What does that mean? The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. The main question we want to ask this morning is what does it mean to be known of God? What does it mean to be known of God? And I'm going to list five things, there's at least five things that it means to be known of God, and then we'll seek to apply it in five corresponding ways. Now before we do that, I need to say a couple of things by way of clarification. Still introducing what we're going to look at today. Two notes about the text itself. First of all, when the verses use the phrase, the way of the righteous, we see that here in verse six, we also see it elsewhere in scripture. When it says the Lord knows the way of the righteous, we mustn't think that it's not the person, the righteous person, but rather just his way, that is his life and conduct, his whole manner of living. The Lord knows that. No. Once again, it's an expression that would completely include not only the man's way of life, but the man himself who is living that life. And to see that clearly, just look at the next phrase, the way of the wicked will perish. Well, it's not just the way of the wicked that's going to perish, it's the wicked themselves who are going to perish. And so you see, it's not just the way of life that God knows, it's the person who is the blessed one that God knows. That's why I'm asking the question, what does it mean to be known of God? So let's clear up that right away at the beginning. It's an expression not to be taken in an absolute sense, in the sense that God doesn't really know me as a person, he only knows my way, that would be absurd. Secondly, we want to notice something else here about the text. When the word knows is used here, and elsewhere in scripture, not always, but usually, it is not referring to mere cognitive knowledge. Of course the Lord knows the righteous, but he knows the wicked too, if you're just simply going to define the word know in terms of cognitive knowledge. Why? Because God's omnipotent, or omniscient rather. He knows all things. And so don't go to this verse here or any other verse and just automatically assume that it's referring merely to the bare omniscience of God, because that can't hold water. With the proper interpretation of the text, look, the Lord knows the way of the righteous, and now here's the parallelism. But the Lord does not know the wicked. Now it doesn't say that, does it? But that's its meaning. The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Why? Because the Lord does not know the wicked. He knows the righteous in a way that he does not know the wicked. And that's precisely why they're perishing. So it's not cognitive knowledge merely. It's some other kind of knowledge that's being spoken of here. Not the knowledge that is just merely facts and data by virtue of his creatorship of every individual. It's a saving knowledge. It's a knowledge that keeps a man out of hell. You see, that's the knowledge that we're looking at here in verse six and the first part. Well, okay, after having then clarified those two things, I simply want to ask the question, what does it mean to be known of God? And suggest to your thinking five things at least that it means, and then we'll take some time to apply that. What effect does that truth have on us or should it have on us if rightly applied? Okay, first of all then, what does it mean to be known of God? Well, I've already said the first one. It's not redundant to say it again. It's for emphasis sake. It means to be blessed of God. We have to start there. The blessed man is the one being described in this psalm in the first three verses and then he's brought up again in verse six in stark contrast to the man who ends up in hell. He is a blessed man. What causes him to differ? Is it because he does these things? Is it because he delights in the law of the Lord and doesn't sit in the seat of the scoffer? Is this why he is blessed? No, that's an evidence that he's already been blessed. He has been changed by the Holy Spirit. He's been given a new heart. He's different because of sovereign grace, not because of works. These blessings that come upon him don't fall out of nowhere, and they're not the result of blind fate. They're the result of a loving, merciful, sovereign God who has blessed him and made him to differ from the rest of humanity. who are in their natural state wicked. Now, if you are known of God, if you've been changed by God's grace and made to be a new creature in Christ, you are blessed beyond what we could even imagine, beyond what you can in your wildest dreams imagine. We have no clue of the vastness of blessing that is already ours, let alone what will be ours when we come into our inheritance in glory. It would boggle our minds to even be described it by some angel or by some further revelation of God in scripture, which we're not going to expect or receive. We can only imagine. Paul puts it this way in Ephesians 2, 7 through 9. He says that God is planning in the coming ages to show the immeasurable riches of his grace toward us. Immeasurable. He's planning to, in the coming ages, show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. You see, if salvation were by works, none of us would be saved, of course. But if our future was all, just say hypothetically because it's not true, but if our future in heaven was based on our good works versus our bad works, then the riches of God's so-called grace would be measurable. They would be comparable to what we've done. I'm speaking hypothetically. But because his riches that are going to be lavished upon us already and in the future are immeasurable, why are they immeasurable? Because it's by grace alone. It's not according to what we've done. It's according to his own infinite grace. We're blessed to be known of God. And then secondly, what does it mean to be known of God? It means to be highly favored and privileged. Highly favored and privileged to be known of God. Wow. Remember, this is not just cognitive knowledge. It's a relational kind of knowledge. It's a saving knowledge. It's a knowledge that marks you out as a blessed man who is safe forever and ever. To have this God of the universe, the creator of all things, know you in that way. Shouldn't we ought to be pinching ourselves? I remember one time Danny and I went with some friends to the Seattle Symphony to hear them play. and we had really good seats, almost on the very front row. But in the front row, right in front of me, was the president of the Boeing company. The highest level position of all of Boeing. And this is when I was working for Boeing at the time, so it actually meant something to me. Now I would just say, heh, who cares? But when I worked at Boeing, there he was sitting there, Phil Condit was his name, not Conduit, Condit. And he was sitting in front of me, I'm not exactly sure if I introduced myself to him there or during the break time. But I remember how excited I was when I told him my name and he asked me questions about where I worked and what I did and so on and so forth. And I remember I couldn't wait for Monday morning to come so I could go to work and tell everybody that I work with that I actually shook hands with Phil Condit. He knows me now. Yeah, right, sort of knows me. But if we can get so excited by that little tiny brush with fame that we've all had from time to time, if we can get so excited about it and feel blessed to be known by somebody important and so blessed that we actually want to tell other people about it, why in the world aren't we excited every day that the God of heaven and earth knows us? Why aren't we excited about that? He knows me personally. He knows me forever. He knows me with a look of love that will save me and rescue me from eternal condemnation. Isn't that something worth talking about? It means that we're highly favored and privileged. It means in the third place that God does not regard you as wicked, at least not anymore. To be known of God means that God does not regard you as a wicked. Hmm. Well, look at the Psalm. The wicked are contrasted with the blessed. In other words, there's two different categories here, at least from God's perspective. All of us start out wicked. All of us are born in sin. All of us are born in Adam and therefore under the category legally of being wicked and also experientially we're wicked because we end up sinning on our own. So it's not just Adam's fault. We also have our own sins that aggravate our guilt. So we're all wicked when we come into this world by default. That's our category. But now we're being informed that there's another category. And it's the blessed category, it's the category of the one who has been made righteous, it's the category of the one who is known of God. Now, how in the world did that happen? The Bible says there's none that seek after God. There's none righteous, no not one. How is it that we're being introduced to a category of people that are righteous? That God doesn't consider wicked anymore? Well, there's only one explanation. It's that God did something. God took to himself and continues to do so now a people and changes them, gives them a new heart out of which flows faith, faith that joins them to Christ who becomes their righteousness legally. Then they're out of the first Adam and they're in the second Adam. They're cut off from the first Adam and the curse that came with him, and they're joined to the second Adam and the blessing that comes with him, and now they're in a completely different category, and it's the non-wicked category. It's the righteous category. Now brethren, I'm gonna say this because I think, I think sometimes we go too far in our naval watching. Self-examination is good. but only if it leads us to Jesus Christ, in whom is our righteousness. And we see a lot of sin, and we do wicked things. But you need to be reminded, and I need to be reminded, that we are, if we're God's people, we are not in that category of wicked any longer. I do wicked things, yes, but I'm not in that category, just like we heard from 1 John 3 today. The tenses of the verbs that are used all throughout that chapter would indicate that John is not saying that one who is born of God doesn't ever sin, but he doesn't continually sin like he used to before he was converted. He doesn't wallow in it. He battles against it. He confesses it. He forsakes it. He clings to the Lord Jesus Christ. We're not wicked if we are in Christ. And even if you do feel wicked, which all of us do when we sin, especially when we see it for what it is, we feel wicked, we need to be reminded that God does not view us as wicked. He views us as his children. He views us in Christ. As a father, he may chasten us, but he will not punish us as a criminal. He punished his son on our behalf. And when He looks at us and He sees our sins, it's not that which condemns us. It does grieve the spirit. It calls forth chastening. But He does not view us as the wicked. We are the righteous ones in His Son. What does it mean to be known of God? Well, it means to be the opposite of the wicked. God does not regard you as that any longer. In the fourth place, what does it mean to be known of God? It means to be loved and cared for by God in a way that the wicked are not. Loved and cared for. Now, if you were to turn to other places in the Psalms to see how the word know, to know, is used, it would become very apparent that it is not speaking of mere cognitive knowledge, as we've already seen. But you would also become aware of the fact that it does refer to a special attention, a special affection, a special care being shown toward those whom God knows in this saving way. For example, and I'll give you two, Psalm 31, verses seven through eight, David says, I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love because you have seen my affliction, you have known the distress of my soul, and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy. Of course God knows the distress of his soul, the distress of anyone's soul, but that's not what David's saying. He's saying, you have known the distress of my soul in a loving way and have not delivered me into the hand of my enemy. It's a caring knowledge. It's an intimate knowledge that does something about it. Psalm 139 verses one through six, very familiar. Oh Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge, that is, the knowledge you have of me, that I've just described. He says, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain it. I remember when I took systematic theology in Bible college, this was one of the proof texts that was used to show the omniscience of God, and so it is. But I submit to you that this has not really that much to do with the omniscience of God at all. That's not what David was marveling at, such knowledge, this omniscience. He knows everything, even the hairs of my head. No, the knowledge that is so wonderful for him that he can't even explain it or understand it is the knowledge of love and care that God would even care about him, care about his goings and comings, care about his sleep patterns. He says, you hem me in on the front and on the rear and then you put your hand on me. You see the parental love and the care and the protection that is being given to him and he knows that God knows him in this way. Love, care, affection. Caring for us presently in this passage in Psalm 1, the tense would indicate that it's a durative He is knowing the way of the righteous. It's a present care. It's a personal care. He doesn't care for his people like a giant herd of sheep. He does look after them on a corporate level, but he cares for each one individually. And that's the knowledge that David just couldn't understand. He couldn't believe. What is man that you're mindful of him? And who am I that you care so much about me? And when Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talked about how the Father knows every hair on your head, that wasn't just to say he knows everything you know. He knows how many hair follicles you have. No, it was to show that he's very concerned about even the littlest things. You've lost a hair today. Like a mother would be concerned with her child who gets up in the morning and all of a sudden there seems to be some little bruise on his leg. Where'd you get that bruise? And God is in a fatherly way, in a tender way, caring for his people. That's what it means to be known of God, is to have love and care from God in a way that the wicked do not. And then fifthly, what does it mean to be known of God? The bottom line is this, it means that you will never perish but will have eternal life. If you're known of God today, you already have eternal life. You've already been made a partaker of the blessings of the age to come, the down payment of the spirit. You already have eternal life now. And what is eternal life? That we may know him and the one whom he has sent. And how do we come to know him? He has chosen to know us. We know him because he first knew us. And if you see the contrast being made in Psalm 1, the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked he does not know. The way of the wicked will perish. The wicked will perish precisely. They will not have eternal life. They'll have eternal death precisely because God never knew them. And that is why Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not do this in your name and that other thing in your name? And he will say to them, depart from me. I never knew you. What do you mean, Jesus? You created me. What do you mean you didn't know me? No, I never knew you in the Psalm 1 sense. It explains Romans 8, 29, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate. It's not this cognitive knowledge looking down the avenues and corridors of time and seeing who will believe and who won't. And based on their own decision, he says, okay, I'm going to predestinate them. No, whom he foreknew means whom he chose to set his love upon, his saving love. he predestined. What does it mean to be known of God? Well, there you have at least five biblical reasons or biblical answers to that question. And now in our time that remains, let us seek to apply it. What effect does this truth have on us if rightly applied? Well, I would suggest that it acts as an antidote to several maladies. It acts as an antidote to several maladies. Let me suggest five, and these five correspond with the five things we've already looked at. This truth, if rightly applied, acts as an antidote for sinful ambition on the one hand, and emptiness on the other. Sinful ambition. What is that? Sinful ambition is not the good kind of ambition, where we want to seek to do things excellently to the glory of God, but sinful ambition is wanting to make a name for yourself, wanting to be notorious, wanting to be important, wanting to be great, wanting to leave behind a great legacy. Wanting to build your own private tower of Babel so that others can babble your name and know who you are. Seeking your own glory. This is what sinful ambition is. Even John and his brother James were sinfully ambitious when they went to our Lord and even got their mother to go to the Lord and say, can we sit, one on your right hand, one on your left, when you come into your kingdom? Sinfully ambitious. And Jesus said that's not the kind of ambition that you're to have. Your ambition is to be a servant. That's the good kind of ambition. Not to lord it over others just so you can be important people and acknowledged as such. Now everybody wants to have a feeling of having a reason to be here in this world. Right? We all want to have some sort of a sense of significance. Some people go the route of sinful ambition and they do many, sometimes many important things and helpful things for society, of course, all to their own glory. And some people do crazy evil things just to make a name for themselves. But then others who try to become important and try to have some sense of worth and significance give up. and they end up being empty. Their motives are just as vain, and they're just as proud as the others. It's called low self-esteem, but low self-esteem is just as prideful as those who seek things ambitiously, selfishly. It's just the opposite. I failed, and now I'm a nothing. Woe is me, and it's a lifelong pity party. Emptiness, sometimes it leads people to drugs, and even to suicide. Well, brethren, if these tendencies are in you, even though you are a child of God, be done with them. Be done with sinful ambition and be done with that emptiness that when you've tried to be important and you can't find any real purpose and meaning and significance in life, be done with both of those psycho kinds of things. Because guess what? Your identity now has not only been changed. You are in Christ. known of God, loved of God, predestined by God to spend eternity in glory. It's not only been changed, your identity has been lifted to a level beyond anything that you can even realize or anyone else on this earth can realize. And you will shine like the stars with Jesus in the heavens at his coming. Don't find your identity. in the things of this world. If greatness comes upon you through the providence of God, let it not be because you sought after it. And always regard yourself as being in Christ and known of God and therefore blessed, blessed beyond what any other non-Christian person could ever be. It's an antidote for sinful ambition and emptiness. Secondly, It's an antidote for pride and ingratitude. And you might think, what do you mean? I just was told I'm one of the most blessed people. I'm as blessed as any human being could possibly be blessed. Don't you think that would make me proud? No, because this same truth that you've been blessed tells you that it's not of you. It's not because of what you've done. It's not because of who you are. It's not because of your merits. It's all because of God's sovereign grace. That's what the very word blessed means. God gave you something of his unmerited favor in the place of merited wrath. That keeps you from being proud. It's not of works, lest any man should boast. It also reminds you how sinful ingratitude really is. It keeps your ingratitude in check, your discontentment, your moaning, your groaning, your complaining. How can you be so ungrateful when you have all of these exceeding great and precious promises as well as fulfillments in your life right now and are known of God? Thirdly, if this truth is rightly applied, it acts as an antidote for spiritual depression. If God no longer regards me as wicked legally, if I'm in a different category, if I'm in the status, the legal position of righteous, not because of what I've done or even because of what I'm doing right now or not doing, but based solely on the merits that have been imputed to me, the merits of Jesus Christ, who is my righteousness, who is your righteousness if you trust in him, If that's the case, if being known of God means that I'm not a wicked person anymore in terms of my status before God, then I don't need to ride the roller coaster of my emotions anymore, do I? Because one day, yesterday morning in particular, I didn't feel like a Christian. Because I had a bad day, at least it started out bad. Then another day I'll have a good day. But it's up and down with our experience, isn't it? Our feelings are up and down. And we sometimes have this, even though we wouldn't say it out loud, we have this feeling that God loves us more on certain days and loves us less on other days based on our performance. That we're wicked one day and we're not wicked the other day. But that's not how God views us. He sees, He knows our failings, our sins, He knows of them right well. But none of them lessens His love for us even one whit. None of our failures. If we are in this new category that He put us in by virtue of uniting us to His Son, looking at us then through the lenses of Christ's perfect merits, then I am just, I'm as equally righteous legally before God as I ever was from the time of my conversion forward. It's a static thing. It doesn't change. Now that is an antidote for spiritual depression, brethren. Your father may chasten you, but he's not going to ever put you back under the category of wicked and condemned. Fourthly, if rightly applied, it's an antidote for anxiety. We saw how being known of God means that God loves us and cares for us even in very small and minute ways. He knows what we're going to pray for before we even ask. He knows what we need before we even ask. In fact, He knows what we need despite what we end up asking for because we usually ask for the wrong thing. He cares about every little thing, even as David said in the Psalm that we read. He cares about our sleeping patterns. He's there when you go to bed. He's there all the night through, hemming you in, as it were, protecting you with His hand upon you. And when you wake up, He takes notice of that, and He takes notice of all the things that you do during the day. That's why David in another psalm can say, surely, goodness and mercy will follow me, will dog my steps. Now, I'd rather have goodness and mercy dogging my steps all my life long than having hell And as Bunyan used to call it, hell mouth, gaping at me, living in fear all my life and worry and anxiety. What's the worst thing that could possibly happen to you? You could die and go to hell. Am I right? Isn't that the worst case scenario? But if you are known of God, united to Christ, there is no condemnation to them who are in Christ. So you've just now eliminated the greatest possible fearful thing that could ever happen to you. Once we get that through our minds, then we don't need to live in that craven kind of fear and anxiety that the world lives in all the time. Sure, we may come into injury, affliction. We may experience trials, we will. And we may be persecuted. We may undergo cruel things of sinners and sometimes even of our brethren. But that's nothing to be compared to the glory that is waiting for us. It's nothing. It's a walk in the park as it were compared to not just the commensurate but the immeasurable riches of God's grace, which are laid up for us in glory. And then lastly, and I've already said it, this truth is an antidote for fear, not the kind of healthy fear of God, but the fear of being condemned. The Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. That means if you're known of God and you improve upon that doctrine rightly, you don't need to fear perishing. You will live forever and ever. You may die the first death, but you won't die the second death, and you will be raised again from the dead, even as our Lord was raised again from the dead. And you will be made like unto his glorious body, and you will be sinless and painless and griefless and tearless and sorrowless for the rest of eternity. You don't need to fear. Well, I wanna close though with a word to those who are not known of God or those who are not sure. Now, the question is not so much do you know God? The question is does he know you? And in Matthew 7, you see those people that Jesus describes. They all seem to know Christ. They all seem to know him or at least about him. But that wasn't the thing that saved them. The ultimate thing that saved them was the knowledge that Christ had or did not have of them. That's the real important question. That's why in Galatians, when Paul is speaking to them, he is saying, when you came to know God, and then he interrupts himself and he says, or rather, are known of God. He wants them to see that behind our coming to know God was his action in sovereign grace, setting his saving knowledge upon us. Well, if you don't know that you're known of God, wouldn't you like to know? Wouldn't you like to know that you don't have to perish? Wouldn't you like to know that you could be in a different category other than wicked, that God could look through you, look at you through different lenses as one who is not just changed and recategorized under the title righteous in Christ, but forever put in that status? Wouldn't you like to know that? Would you like to know that God knows you? Wouldn't you like to know that you'll be able to stand on the day of judgment and not be blown away like the chaff, like the wicked will be blown away by the wrath of God, that you will be stand and you will hear the words, welcome, come, blessed of my father, enter into the kingdom, enter into your rest, enter into your inheritance. Well, there's only one way that the Bible tells us of, there's only one way that anybody can ever know that God knows them. And that is to come to the one whom God has known from all eternity. His only begotten son. He knows him. He knows all about him. He's delighted in him from all eternity. There's nothing in him that does not meet with his favor. He knows him and cares for him and loves him in an eternal, infinite way. And God has condescended to know us, mere creatures, through him, his son, who is the mediator, who says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. You come to Jesus Christ, and he will not only introduce you to the Father, but he will reconcile you to the Father. You come to the one who took the wicked person's place and took the punishment that was due to wicked people on himself on the cross? He wasn't there forever, was he? He was buried and vindicated on the third day, rose from the dead. If you come to that one, you're joined to him. You are all of a sudden changed, recategorized, and God no longer views you as wicked, but as righteous in His Son. That's the only answer I have. It's the only answer the Bible gives. There is no other way to know that you are known of God, except to be joined to Jesus Christ by faith, and in Him you will then know that you are known. Let's pray. Our Father, we marvel that considering the huge gap and chasm between creator and creature, that you should be mindful of us. And we do marvel at your omniscience, the fact that you know all things to the very smallest of details. But what we marvel at the most is that you would know us in a saving and a loving way, even to the extent of sending your son to take the place of sinners and to be made sin for us, that we should be made the righteousness of God in him. We marvel that you would even know us or care about us, but then to know that you know us in this amazing, eternal way. We pray that you would, by your spirit, revive our gratitude, deliver us from all of these spiritual maladies that come upon us, either because of our own corruption or the temptation of the devil. Help us to live with a greater sense of our identity that we have already in this life, of being in Christ. Let us know something of the joy of our salvation, even now. and know something of the confidence that we have, and know something of the eternal weight of glory that we might view the things that are here and now with proper perspective. Work in us as you are pleased and as these truths are calculated to do, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen.