The following is a sermon from Grace City Church in Denver, Colorado. Grace City exists to make and mature disciples of Jesus Christ. For more info, visit gracecitydenver.com. Today we will be reading from Psalm 36. Transgression speaks to the wicked, deep in his heart. There is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flatters himself in his own eyes, that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit. He has ceased to act wisely and do good. He plots trouble while on his bed. He sets himself in a way that is not good. He does not reject evil. Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God. Your judgments are like the great deep. Man and beast you save, O Lord. How precious is your steadfast love, O God. The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house. and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life. In your light do we see light. Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your righteousness to the upright of heart. Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me, nor the hand of the wicked drive me away. There the evildoers lie fallen. They are thrust down, unable to rise. This is the word of the Lord. where do you find the greatest satisfaction in your life? The greatest joy, the greatest delight comes to you when you're doing what? When you're thinking about what? When you're engaged in what? I was thinking this week how even followers of Jesus can often think that the way of Jesus is only narrow. And Jesus said, narrow is this path. But we can think everything in the Christian life, everything is sacrifice and it's pain and it's rejection by my culture. And it's just super, super hard. And you may even be convinced that the delightful things in your life, come from the moments when you're not pursuing God, but you're substituting God with something else that brings you joy, that brings you pleasure. The Psalm actually says the opposite, that your greatest joy is not gonna come from you kind of marginalizing God in your life and doing whatever you please, but it's gonna come from seeking the Lord and centering your life on him. So let me give you a quick overview theme where we're going this morning and then we'll jump right in. The big idea here in this text is that your goodness and your delight are directly correlated to the fear of the Lord. Your goodness is not something you just go out and work up the goodness and then come back and present to God. It's something that's correlated to you beginning with the fear of the Lord. But your delight also, your joy, the pleasure of your life is directly correlated to the fear of the Lord. And this is how we're going to break it down. The first four verses is talking about the way of the unrighteous with God. Verses 5-9 are talking about the way of God with the righteous. And then the last three verses are this concluding prayer. So, let's begin with the way of the unrighteous toward God, or with God. Because he's beginning a lot of this psalm as a contrast. between here's the way of just the world, everyone instinctively, naturally, here's the way of those who are choosing to pursue God with intentionality. And notice this Psalm begins with these words, transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart. I kind of prefer the New Living translation for this, it might make a little bit more sense. Sin whispers to the wicked deep within their heart. I was paused there. I'm not saying you're wicked, but do you ever even sense that as someone who's a mix of good and bad? Where it almost feels like this voice that's not your own voice is whispering to you with different kinds of lies. And maybe those lies are like in the Garden of Eden, like a temptation, an enticement to sin. It's like, come on, you should do this. It's gonna be great. It's gonna go well for you. or it may be an accusation. I've talked with a number of you that you go through this where you hear this voice in your heart, in your head, that's like, you are not good. You've never been good, you're never going to be good, or your goodness is not enough, God is displeased with you, and you hear this lie on repeat in your mind, in your heart, of you will never ever be good enough. because of what you've done or what you failed to do in your past. Maybe these voices are saying accusations against God, saying it's not that you're not good enough, it's that he's not good enough. This is the Garden of Eden as well. The temptation in part is God doesn't want you to have the good thing. He wants to hold you back. He wants to withhold something good and necessary from you because he's not as good as he could be. And the idea here with this very first phrase is just David outlining your root problem is not just the things that you say or that you do that you're like, ah, I wish I could have that back. That was a sin, that wasn't true, that hurt someone. That's not the root problem. The root problem is something that's happening in our heart. And it says, Jesus said, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Why do we say the things that we do? Why do we do the things that we do? It's an overflow of what's already going on in the heart. And the scary thing is, sin's in there whispering, enticing, deceiving. I've never used Psalm 36, 1-4 in counseling before, but I thought as I was going through this this week, I was like, maybe I will start using this for counseling. But it is incredibly useful to see basically the normal pattern of sin. Let me explain. So we put this first slide up here, and we're starting from the bottom because the bottom is our foundation. You're starting in verse one with the heart, what's going on in your heart, your inner person. And that could be this mix of beliefs and desires and emotions, but what's going on in your heart is going to channel upward, it's going to produce Certain thoughts in your mind, thoughts, imaginations, plans, plots, those plots could be good, they could be for bad. Your imaginations could be good, they could be bad, but they're coming straight out of the things that you believe to be true, your emotions, et cetera, what's going on in your heart. And then of course the overflow then is into your actions, the things that you say and do, or do not say and do not do. but it's all rooted, it's all connected. Now, a useful way to think about this, I think, is next slide, picturing a fruit-bearing plant. So the heart is equivalent to the root structure. And what I mean is, you know that if you're just transplanting a seed or a root, That plant is going to be whatever the root is. If it's a tomato root, it's going to be a tomato plant. If it's an apple root or a pear root, it's going to be that fruit. But then above that, you see, you don't just have roots, you have shoots. And the rest of that is all a shoot structure. And the shoots are what are taking the energy of your heart, the energy of your roots, feeding and growing a certain kind of fruit. And then obviously the fruit, the thing that you eat, the thing that you enjoy out of the total plant is the most visible thing where you just look at it and you're like, I didn't know what kind of tree that was most of the year. Now I can see it's a pear tree. because you see the fruit. And the heart correlates with the root, the mind correlates with the shoot, and the actions correlate with the fruit. Now let me show you how this is what David is saying in the first few verses. So first of all, he's saying the root of this person who's described in verses one through four, the root is the failure to fear God. So look with me at the second half of verse one, there is no fear of God before his eyes. Now that's important because the Psalms and Proverbs often tell us positively that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. I'm not saying that you can't be smart, intellectual. I'm not saying you can't be successful by many measures without fearing the Lord. But what the Bible says is you can't be truly wise unless the heart foundation is I'm a person who fears the Lord. So you think about this, David is saying the root philosophy of the wicked, the root belief, you could say, of the wicked is simply I don't fear God. And I can say that a number of different ways. I don't respect God. I am not in awe of God. I do not live my life taking God into account and then actually changing my behaviors and my thoughts and my emotions based on the fact that God not only exists, but that he's a certain kind of God. I just don't care. The commentator Boyce says it this way, David's great insight is that wickedness begins with the rejection of God. The wicked person is characterized above all else by the fact that he does not take God into account. The wicked person lives as if God were non-existent, refusing to believe that he or she will need to give an accounting to God and be judged by him one day. Tim Keller says it a little differently, a little shorter. He says, sin shrugs at God. Its essence is failing to believe, not that he exists, but that he matters. And think about that, how many people, maybe even us, we would say, of course I believe that God exists, and I even believe that God has done all these things to me, but right now in this moment, he doesn't matter. And at the heart level, that lack of fear of God is changing everything about our life. As of March of this year, Gallup poll said 68% of Americans self-identify as Christians. So forgetting the other 32% for a moment, we're just talking about professing Christians now. How many of us can go days or weeks or months or maybe even years, and I don't mean not without believing God, Not without even picking up a Bible or praying to God, but functionally can go days, weeks, months, years without saying, my life is centered on God. I'm in awe of God. I live with a holy dread of displeasing God because I love Him. And I want to please Him. And it would be traumatic to me to know that my life is displeasing to God. Instead of thinking about the other 68% of Christians in America, what about you? Do you go through a day with a healthy respect for God? Do you go through a day in awe of who He is, what He has done for you, what He promises yet to do? Do you go through a day thinking, I mean, there are literally moments where you're like, I could do this, and it would probably bring me pleasure to do this, but I have what you just said. I have a holy dread of that would not honor God. God sees me. And it's not like I'm trembling in fear of just like there's an anxiety that I have toward God at all times. He just is waiting to just hit me with a giant heavenly stick. But I don't wanna displease Him. I'm living in the awareness of who he is, what he's called me to. So on the authority of scripture, I caution you this, casual disregard for God is the root of sin. Many people do not begin with an overt rebellion, like I hate God, I despise God, I'm an atheist, I don't even believe there is a God. It can just be a casual disregard. I don't fear him, I don't take him into account, as Tim Keller says, I believe he exists, he just doesn't matter right now. That's where sin begins. That's why I have the heart level, the root is the foundation. Now, go on to verse two, for he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. Now here's the picture. He's saying without a fear of God, you become detached from the ultimate benchmark of what is good, what is right, what is true. You're just disconnected to it. It can be right there, but you're like, that doesn't matter to me. Instead of God being your frame of reference, you become your own frame of reference. And I'll illustrate this a couple of ways. If you're building a home, I don't mean like a family, I mean a physical house, okay? If you're building a physical house, and you're like, I don't need a level, I don't need a square. I'm going to eyeball it. Like my sense of level is level enough. My sense of a right angle, it's good enough. And so you start assembling a life and periodically you step back and you look at the house and you're like, yeah, it's fine. That's what we're doing. That's what he's saying. We flatter ourselves. We flatter ourselves to think it's fine. It's okay. It's close enough. It's good enough. And it's not because it's not according to the fear of the Lord. It's not according to his level, his standard. Another example. If you're flying an airplane, a piece of your instrumentation that is critically important to you. It used to be called an artificial horizon. I think now it's called an attitude indicator. The idea is there's this thing that is controlled by gyroscopes in the plane where it's showing you your relative position to the horizon. So if you start to bank your plane down, it changes that horizon. You can see that. Banking up, banking to the right, banking to the left. Instead of combining those things, it's always showing you your relative position to the horizon. And the thing is, it's always right. So you can be in a storm, you can be in clouds, and you can say, well, I don't see the ground. So it doesn't feel like I'm banking. And you could look at that little device and it would say, well, you're banking. In fact, you're about to crash. You need to pull up. And there have been many, many aviation accidents because people trusted what they felt over trusting that instrumentation. They're flattering themselves that, I know how to fly a plane, okay? I know what it feels like to just be going straight or climbing gently where I want to go, and it's a self-deception. So putting those together now, if the root of sin is the failure to fear God, then the shoot is just a self-centered self-deception. self-deception. It is, I think I'm okay. I'm telling myself okay. Again, because I'm cut off from the level. I'm cut off from the right angle. I'm cut off from the instrumentation that tells me what is true and right and good, but I'm just flying by the seat of my pants. And it feels good. And that word flattery there in verse two, we're used to that being applied to another person. You know what flattery is? It's like a slippery, insincere, deceitful, a little bit dishonest way of manipulating other people so you get what you want. And usually that's how we think of flattery. Interesting, the psalmist says you're doing this to yourself when you begin your life without the fear of God in your heart. And the flattery sounds like this, I'm fine, I'm good enough. Besides, if God really cared about the things I was doing, then he would stop me. And he hasn't stopped me. So obviously it's okay. I'm having the time of my life. I'm sure it's fine. It's a flattery, it's a deceit, it's slippery, it's not true. And you can see how your mind, your thoughts, are no longer orbiting around God and God's character and God's promises and God's plan for your life, God's measure of right and wrong. Your thoughts are orbiting around, it seems fine to me. And then we go to the fruit. The fruit then, verses three and four, is sinful imagination's words and deeds. So he says, the words of his mouth are trouble and deceit. He has ceased to act wisely and do good. He plots trouble while on his bed. He sets himself in a way that is not good. He does not reject evil. And this is a natural progression. If God doesn't really matter, and you're the center of your own self-deceived universe, then what restrains you from doing wrong instead of doing right? Well, your conscience, but your conscience isn't being trained according to the attitude indicator. It's being trained according to your feelings, what you want in any given moment. Say it a different way. If God defines good and evil, and our second core value as a church, the GR, Grace City, the R in Grace City, is rule of scripture. And that can sound harsh, but it's not meant to. It's just, if there's a rule of scripture, if God says something is right, it's unchangeably right. If he says something is wrong, it's unchangeably wrong. And if your heart isn't tuned into the law of God and the character of God, because you've ignored God or you've abandoned God, what prevents you from plotting a course of life that is like he says here, it's trouble. It hurts you and it hurts other people. I picture someone that because they've begun their life without the fear of God, they're a person shrinking in on themself. Instead of growing and expanding and flourishing, there's this just centric thing, you're just spinning a smaller and tighter and tighter circle into your own beliefs, your own thoughts and imaginations, your own will. and you're becoming less and less truly you and who God designed you to be. And I think you can see that a lot of our world is living this way. When we don't fear God and we flatter ourselves, I'm probably okay, I'm probably fine, then we don't know which way's up and we start hurting ourselves and others. So slide three, if we could. This is what's happening when we go through David's progression. Look at the right side, which is parallel to the left side, and it starts in the bottom right. The wicked is a person that's saying God, if he exists, is utterly ignorable. And a lot of our culture would say, like, I believe there's a God. It's just that he's utterly ignorable. I don't care. I don't need to know his story. I guess I'll meet him in the end or not. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't. But I'm not going to take him into account. And that produces these self-centered, self-deceived thoughts, which produce sinful, harmful, deceitful words and actions. I wanna pause there before I go on to the good news of this text and just say that there's a call to action here, okay? If that's you, repent. Acknowledge, I did not wake up this morning saying, God, I fear you, which means I center my life on you. who you are, what you've done, what you've promised deeply matters to me. You've done the opposite. I believe you exist. I'm on my way to church or I'm gonna turn on the live stream, see how much I believe God exists. But you're gonna go to work on Monday or school on Monday and he's not gonna factor in. And if you find yourself there, the biblical call is to repent and to turn around, to change your beliefs, to change your mind by the power of the Spirit at work in you. If that's not you right now, then praise the Lord. I imagine a number of you are like, I'm trying to walk in the fear of the Lord, and yes, I fall down, but I get back up, okay? If that's you, the call is not to look at the world, to look at the wicked, as David uses that word, and say, they're the wicked people, I'm the good person, judgment. I think a biblical call is to grieve. To grieve for them and to pray for them instead of judging them self-righteously. Because you're looking at a person, you're like, in your beliefs and your desires and emotions, the fountain out of which your entire life flows, what's the problem? We look at the fruit and we're like, I don't like the fruit on your life. I reject you and your politics and your social stuff, and I don't like people like you. And God's calling you to look at their heart and to see, do you see whether they're a conservative center or a liberal center? It's the same root problem. They don't fear the Lord. And so you grieve for them. You're disconnected from now what we're gonna go to that would give you life and joy and goodness and satisfaction. So let's go there. Look at the way of God with the righteous, verses 5-9 then. And I'm going to fly through this, but first of all, note this isn't directly parallel to point 1. Because point 1, you think he's talking about this is the way the wicked treat God. They ignore Him. Now let's turn to the way the righteous treat God, but that's not what he does. He flips it to the way God treats the righteous. And his emphasis is on, if you're fearing God and seeking him, this is how God is looking to you. And it's almost like he's saying something like this, let me tell you about the goodness of the God that you're marginalizing and ignoring. Tim Keller used to say all the time, tell me about the God you don't believe in, because maybe I don't believe in him either. And in the same way, I think it'd be understandable if you were dismissive of a God who is petty and vindictive. If you chose to marginalize and not think about a God who's presented in scripture as good but not great, or great but not good, it'd be okay to set aside and not take into account a God who is always changing and you can never keep up with the new rules, and you're like, I'm trying to please you, but it's like a pump fake all the time from you, God. What's the point of trying? But that's not the God we encounter in Scripture. Let me just quickly give you five things that he says about the God that we encounter in Scripture and why He is worthy of you starting your life fearing Him, trusting Him, loving Him, enjoying Him, serving Him. First of all, he says, verse five, because His steadfast love and faithfulness are limitless. Psalmist says, steadfast love is that great word has said, it's a loyal covenant love. Faithfulness is like commitment. It is trustworthiness in a relationship. And I just picture David like just, I mean, he's a shepherd. So I just picture him out and it's dark and he's looking up into the sky and just saying, it just goes on and on and on and on. And God, I can't even imagine a limit to your love for people and your trustworthiness, your faithfulness to us. And that's contrasted with, we all know people that there are limits to their love. Unspoken boundaries. conditions, restrictions. I'll love you unless, or I'll love you until, or I'll love you if. I mean, there are people all over the country every day standing at a marriage altar taking a covenant till death do us part. And they don't mean it, because there are boundaries, restrictions, and conditions that must be met in order to receive my love. And David's saying, God is not like that. There are not boundaries to his love and faithfulness. There are not conditions for you to meet. Praise God. That's part of it. Because we're saved by grace, because you didn't meet certain conditions in order to be saved, that means you can't lose your salvation because you now fail to meet those conditions. If it's by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, we get to just mess up, which I'm not encouraging you to mess up, but we do, and you confess that to the Lord, and because it's by grace, His love and His faithfulness toward you haven't gone anywhere. This is... what Sally Lloyd-Jones famously called his never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love. Thank you, Jesus Storybook Bible for Kids. It's like the best description of what he's talking about here. It just goes on and on and on, and there's nothing for you to do to earn it. It's a gift. Secondly, let's go on, verse six. He's saying his righteousness and justice are inexhaustible. Lord, your righteousness is like the mountains of God. Your judgments are like the great deep. And I'm still just kind of picturing shepherd David, King David, he's traveled around. He sees the massive mountain over there. He sees the big sea over here. And he's like, is anything bigger than that? I can't imagine. Your righteousness is like that. It's a word that means uprightness. God, your word is the standard of what is right. The judgment's word is a word that means justice. And it literally is like, if here is the righteousness, if here is the standard that God said, this is good, this is bad, the judgments, the justices, I will always judge by the standard that I told you. I'm not gonna swap it out, which would be an injustice or an unfairness. By the way, ignoring God doesn't change the reality that God sets what's right and wrong. He sets what's true and false. We neglect it to our own peril. So using those illustrations I said earlier, if God's level says this is out of level, you can stand back and say, looks fine to me. If God's attitude indicator says you're about to crash, you can be like, feels fine to me. God's standard is right, and it goes on and on and on, inexhaustibly right. Thirdly, his protection and salvation are costly. So 6b, man and beast you save, O Lord, which reminds me of the end of Jonah, where God is having mercy on Israel's enemies, Nineveh. And God, these are the Assyrians. We hate the Assyrians. I'll go to Nineveh and tell them to repent, or else I'm going to wipe them out. And you come to the last verse of Jonah, and God is saying, I see thousands and thousands of people who don't even know their right hand from their left, meaning their children that don't know the most basic thing yet, and many animals. God's compassion extends over his creation. It's pretty cool. Going on, verse seven, how precious is your steadfast love, O Lord, that children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. So he's talking about my protection, my salvation, and I wanna show you a little clue here and a little metaphor that David uses. The clue, when he says how precious is your steadfast love, that word precious there refers to something that's extremely valuable because of its intrinsic worth, its rarity, and its beauty. So think diamond, you know, that tiny little rock. But guys, you're supposed to, you know, you're supposed to save up six months of your life salary and turn and buy this little rock to put on your girlfriend's finger. She becomes your fiance. Who determined those little tiny clear rocks are worth tens of thousands of dollars? Well, they're precious, again, because of the intrinsic worth of the process that was required to create something that beautiful, the rarity of it, the splendor of it, the way it sparkles against that black velvet backdrop with all the lights from all the different angles when they're trying to upsell you. They're like, no, that one's OK. You should probably look under this microscope and see the inclusions, the little imperfections. So if that's what you think your girl's worth, But if you want something better, let me show you plan B. That's this word precious. And he's looking at the steadfast love of God and saying, it is intrinsically worthy. It is beautiful to me. It is rare to ever in our world encounter that kind of love. But then there's a metaphor. And he says, the children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings. Refuge tells you why. A refuge is a place of safety, it's a place of rest, it's a place of comfort. And David is calling you to think of a mother bird, maybe first with its eggs and then with its little flightless bird babies. And it's saying God, like that, extends his wings. You know, anthropomorphisms, where you ascribe human traits to something that's not human? This is a zoomorphism. So you take an animal trait and you ascribe it. But that's what he's doing. He's like, you watch that mother bird come in here. I got you. But here's the image. It's not simply come into the refuge of my wings. How is the egg and then the baby bird safe from? You think about this. Extreme weather. Extreme cold or extreme heat would destroy that egg, would destroy that baby. A predator. Hail, bad storm, wind could knock them out of their nest and be destroyed. So the mom is protecting, but I want you to think of the imagery. How is the mom protecting? The mom doesn't make the hail go away. The mom doesn't make the extreme cold go away. The mom doesn't make the predator initially go away. She is taking that so that the baby is protected. So there's harm that's coming. but she's absorbing, she's literally absorbing that harm in her own wings so that the thing that sought refuge under those wings is safe. You know, there are stories of after a forest fire, for example, people literally finding this bird, this mother bird dead, removing them from the nest and finding babies alive underneath because she has sheltered them with her wings. She's taken the brutal beating of that fire to be a refuge. How cool is it then that you turn to the pages of the New Testament, Jesus takes up this very same metaphor in Matthew 23 and Luke 13 and he says this, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it, how often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings? And I believe Psalm 36 is foreshadowing the perfect bird, the perfect refuge of like, God is going to gather you under his wings and you are safe, you have rescue, you have comfort. And I use the word costly because it's not just precious costly, expensive costly, it is, it cost Jesus his life. We live through him because he died. He laid down his life on a cross. Going on, the next thing, his blessings and delights are abundant. Verse eight, they feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. Abundance here is an interesting word. It literally refers to the fatty portions, okay? So as the different people of Israel are bringing their sacrifices to the priest, and there are certain things about the animal they weren't allowed to consume as just the person, but the priest got certain portions of that to feed his family. And some of those were called fatty portions. Today, if you're like me, you're like, ugh. And then I know some foodies among you are like, mm. Some of you that are more familiar with grocery shopping may resonate with you. It's like you go to the store and you see the select beef and you see the choice beef. God's saying, I'm not feeding you select beef or choice beef. You know what I'm feeding you? Prime beef. It's the perfect beef. It's the beef that you look at and you're like, the marbling of the fat in there and the tenderness of that cut. Okay, it's the Wagyu. And God is saying in the Psalm, I've got the Wagyu beef for my children. Similarly, delights is the word Eden. You would recognize that from the Garden of Eden, a place that characterized human flourishing and perfection. The word delights is something that is literally luxurious. And I want you to notice God isn't giving his children a snack or a trickle of delights. What is he giving them? A feast and a river of abundance and delights. He's not like, I have a little awesome goodness for you. He's like, I have something that comes and just keeps coming and coming and coming. I provide over an abundance, this goodness, this blessing. And I'm just pausing to say, do you even functionally believe that? It can be easy again, just look at your life and say, well, I've got this trial and this challenge and this pain and this conflict, and you're telling me, and some of you say, no, right now I don't believe that. Then again, the call to scripture is just go back to the heart level and just say, do I fear you? Am I building my life around you? Or am I so torn between what you offer me and what the world offers me, I don't know what's coming from where. And I'm frustrated with you. So see this last thing then, that God is for those who delight in him. His light and life are the source of true life. Verse nine, he says, for with you is the fountain of life. In your light do we see light. And there's a couple important things there. Fountain, so he's like, a fountain is a spring. It's that thing gurgling up out of the ground. So again, it's not, I have a cistern of delight for you. Have a sip, but we're running low, so pace yourself. Fountain, it's coming, and it's coming, and it's coming, and it's not going to stop. There's more right behind it, is the first picture, okay? Secondly, the word life that David uses is not talking about your bios, okay? It's not talking about your physical life. This is a particular Hebrew word that refers to a prosperous, blessed, bountiful life that's filled with favor. And he's saying, because God is the fountain, the spring of that kind of life, you can always be blessed, you can always be favored, even if it doesn't feel like it. And I want you to see how many layers of this point directly to Jesus. It's like to the woman at the well, I am the fountain of living water. This now becomes personified. You want to find this kind of fountain in your life for abundance and flourishing and joy and delight. It's not found just in a book, certainly not found in a rule book. It's found in a person, Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the son of God, who gave his life for you, who rose from the dead and who reigns. It's found in him. Secondly, he's the light of the world. He came to overcome the darkness with all that the darkness represents. Ignorance, pain, sin, frustration, depression, death. He's the light. Also, I think this verse may be what Jesus had in mind when he told his disciples, I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I didn't just come so you could live longer. I came to give you an abundance, a flourishing of life. And it's so important to grasp this reality that the only way we see anything truly is by seeing it in light of God. You ever go on vacation somewhere new and you're maybe flying across the country, maybe even flying across the world somewhere, you land, go through the process of getting your rental car or an Uber or whatever, you're exhausted, it's late, it's dark, you just go to bed, And you get up in the morning and you open the windows and you're like, whoa, now that's a beach. That is a mountain scene right there. What a forest. I mean, it's just cool stuff everywhere. I said, well, you didn't see it because the light wasn't on. Nothing changed, you were there, but you couldn't enjoy it, you couldn't see it. It wasn't truly alive to you until that light came on. And the psalmist is saying God's presence in your life is like that. You're just sitting in darkness and all the goodness is around you, you just don't see it for what it really is. It's only in his light that we see light, that we see things as they truly are. Family, why would you ignore a God who can do those five things I just articulated for you? the love, the faithfulness, the righteousness, the justice, the salvation, the refuge at the cost of His own life. You want to marginalize a God who's not a God of the Bible? You want to marginalize some human invention? Go for it. There's no cost to that. There's no cost to you of doing that. But this God, the true God who has revealed Himself to us, is for you. So this will just take a moment, a concluding prayer. verses 10 through 12. If you'll put up slide three again. So the negative side of this prayer was verses 11 and 12. He's just saying, since all this is true, God, protect me from people like that. Just protect me. I'm not perfect. But if someone wants to walk away from the fear of you and just say, if God exists, he's utterly ignorable, I'm self-deceived, I'm self-centered, all I care about is me, and I flatter myself and lie to myself, and I think I'm fine. So therefore, I have sinful, harmful, deceitful words and actions. I don't care about hurting other people if it helps me. And he's just saying, God, protect me from people like that. But then positively he's saying, and bless me with your presence, verse 10. If you're the kind of God that I just articulated and this fountain is coming and coming and more and more goodness and abundance and preciousness and luxury, using that word correctly, bless me with that presence, God. That's the closing prayer. Last slide. I want to end positively with the same chart, but we'll do green because green means growing, right? It's alive. So just imagine that through this psalm, you're like, God, I don't want a heart that begins with marginalizing you, forgetting about you. I want a heart that, God, you're worthy of my love, trust, and attention. That's what it means to fear you. And I'm going to get up, and I'm going to go to work, and I'm going to go to school, and I'm going to go to the recreational fun stuff, and I'm going to remember you're worthy of my love and my trust and my attention. And so that creates thoughts and imaginations and plans for my future that are God-centered and others-serving instead of about me and deceitful and just me, me, me. If the root is right and it's feeding the shoot, do you know what, and I'll say, do you know what automatically happens? Is that fruit. Righteous, healing, truthful words would flow from your mouth. Righteous, truthful, healing actions would flow from your life. You don't start there like, I want people to see how kind I am, how loving I am, how good I am. So you're scotch taping apples to your tree. See the fruit? It's gonna rot, it's gonna fall off, because it's not organic. You start with the heart and say, God, you have my attention. And I believe my goodness, going back to this theme, my goodness comes from you, my delight comes from you. It's directly correlated to fearing you, trusting you, loving you, enjoying you. So may you this morning, may your life look like the right side of this chart, every one of us, just saying, I begin, maybe today, some of you, for the very first time, God, I want to fear you. I want you to matter to me. And God will produce this. You just listened to a recording of a sermon from Grace City Church in Denver, Colorado. We hope you can join us in person soon. Thanks for listening. The Lord bless you and keep you. Amen.